mich...@j3ksolutions.com wrote: >> On Fri, 13 Mar 2009, mich...@j3ksolutions.com wrote: >> >> >>> Explanation(5): The more you understand how the database is to be used, >>> and the more complexity and thought you put into your database design, >>> the >>> less complex it will be to retrieve reliable information out of it. >>> Furthermore, (and this is probably what makes me crazy when Nulls are >>> evolved) after a ten year stretch of software development, where I and a >>> team designed our own databases, I did a nine year stretch of >>> statistical >>> programming, using databases designed by other people, and Nulls in the >>> data made the results unpredictable, and yeah, made me crazy! I had to >>> write nightly processes to resolve inconsistencies in the data, if at >>> least report inconsistencies. You know the old saying "Garbage in = >>> Garbage out", to me Nulls are garbage, and if there is a good reason for >>> nulls to be a part of good clean data then someone please help me >>> understand that. >>> >> Hi >> >> I'm in a argumentative mood today too. :-) >> >> I have a database logging weather data. When a station does not report a >> temperature, it is set to NULL. It would be a very bad idea to set it to 0 >> as this would ruin the whole statistics. >> >> NULL is a perfectly valid information in many cases. >> >> Cheers >> Thomas >> >> > > > OK! I do understand, thank you. > > But hypothetically speaking, what value would you use if you didn't have a > "I don't what this is" value like null? > > I ask this because I started programming when NULL was really zero, and > part of the ASCII collating sequence. > > I'd use -99999.9999, I'd never allow a "i don't know what it is" value > like Null in my database. > > > Mike. > > Somewhere out there, Achilles is gaining on the turtle....
-- unheralded genius: "A clean desk is the sign of a dull mind. " ------------------------------------------------------------- Phil Jourdan --- p...@ptahhotep.com http://www.ptahhotep.com http://www.chiccantine.com/andypantry.php -- MySQL General Mailing List For list archives: http://lists.mysql.com/mysql To unsubscribe: http://lists.mysql.com/mysql?unsub=arch...@jab.org
