Why this email? Because IMO it seems that along the way, while dealing
(or not) with individual issues, things relating to how the GUI deals
with required fields got a bit messed up.
In running through some issues to be closed I cam across this issue:
http://www.openoffice.org/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=87514
(mdb/ado: field not NULLable in table / form - but by SQL)
- the issue is not at all clear.
- it sounds like a common new user error, this equating of '' and NULL.
Frank comments on the fact that an empty string is not equivalent to
NULL in his remarks in the issue. Why? Because the person posting the
issue mixes the two in their summary and comment entries. But for sake
of argument let's assume that the requester really is saying that they
want to declare a CHAR or VARCHAR field as REQUIRED and then allow empty
strings as input.
Alright - well, here is a statement that I can not actually back up with
empirical evidence - "When a user declares a text field as NOT NULL they
almost always mean that an empty string ( or a string of all white space
characters ) is also invalid input". Now before you say I'm wrong on
that ask yourself when the last time you did such a thing?
Directly related issue is:
http://www.openoffice.org/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=90403
(Textbox controls ignore "Empty string is NULL" property when field is
required)
Possibly related
http://www.openoffice.org/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=78987
(Can't insert records with NOT NULL fields with DEFAULT values)
http://www.openoffice.org/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=80930
([RFE] UI for the FormsCheckRequiredFields data source setting)
The current situation.
Using DEV300 m27 it appears that setting a CHAR or VARCHAR field as
REQUIRED is in all but one use case meaningless in the context of the
the Base GUI. The one case being on insert of a new record, and here
even it is now open for silly data input errors that could have been
avoided.
It seems to me worthwhile, at the moment, to look at the whole issue of
dealing with required fields for a moment and not just myopically
looking at each of the separate issues.
Drew
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