Re: Null and Void() - Or, Abandon All Hope Ye Who allow

Scott Marlowe <smarlowe@g2switchworks.com> writes:

> However, there are often nulls that fall in the category of "who
> cares?"  For those, null is a perfectly acceptable alternative, and
> there's no need for all the extra work.

There is often a need for special case values. Situations like "subscription
expiration date" for a subscription that shouldn't expire at all, or even
"income level" for users who refuse to give that information. Also for things
like the various NaN values.

I kind of wish SQL allowed for an arbitrary set of "special values" regardless
of data type rather than allow a single special value and have so many hard
coded magical behaviours.


--
greg