It's actually being done for some sort of performance, since NULLs are not indexed. Although now it's suspect, since there are so many NULLs...
Thx, Rich Rich Jesse System/Database Administrator [EMAIL PROTECTED] Quad/Tech International, Sussex, WI USA > -----Original Message----- > From: Mirsky, Greg [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] > Sent: Monday, November 25, 2002 3:45 PM > To: Multiple recipients of list ORACLE-L > Subject: RE: Mass updates to production tables (NULL to non-NULL) > > > What about creating a view with nvl(column_name,chr(32)) for > the columns > involved? > > Greg > > -----Original Message----- > Sent: Monday, November 25, 2002 4:04 PM > To: Multiple recipients of list ORACLE-L > > > I've got a real hot project (8.1.7.2 on HP/UX 11.0) that > needs to have NULLs > converted to spaces on three different columns. Each is a CHAR, so I > shouldn't need to worry about chaining, since that column's > full size has > already been allocated in the block, right? But the first > column has 1.2M > NULLs out of 1.45M rows. > > My first test was to just UPDATE mytable SET mycol = ' ' > WHERE mycol IS > NULL, after removing the index on that column. Seeing as > there were many > more rows updated than I had anticipated, I was going to test > the UPDATE > using a cursor, and committing at every 10K rows (~120 total > commits) to > reduce rollback and locking issues. > > Thoughts? Since this table is used for time-and-attendance > and directly > affects payroll, downtime isn't possible. > > TIA! > > Rich > > > Rich Jesse System/Database Administrator -- Please see the official ORACLE-L FAQ: http://www.orafaq.com -- Author: Jesse, Rich INET: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Fat City Network Services -- 858-538-5051 http://www.fatcity.com San Diego, California -- Mailing list and web hosting services --------------------------------------------------------------------- To REMOVE yourself from this mailing list, send an E-Mail message to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (note EXACT spelling of 'ListGuru') and in the message BODY, include a line containing: UNSUB ORACLE-L (or the name of mailing list you want to be removed from). You may also send the HELP command for other information (like subscribing).
