On Fri, Mar 13, 2009 at 3:20 PM, Andy Wallace <awall...@cisdata.net> wrote:
> aaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrrrrggggggggggggggghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh > > > 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. >> >> > -- > MySQL General Mailing List > For list archives: http://lists.mysql.com/mysql > To unsubscribe: > http://lists.mysql.com/mysql?unsub=fuller.art...@gmail.com > >
