MORE ON "THE FINAL NULL IN THE COFFIN"

From: Filiberto López

03 Jan 2006

I finally was able to open the unzipped PDF document you uploaded to the web site. Thank you very, very much, for your help! I started reading right away, and it looks interesting. The document contradicts all I have learned about how to handle NULLs. I don't really know a lot about other people's opinion about NULLs, but I can tell you my opinion: I hate them! I hate NVL()! I hate IS NULL! I do a lot of maintenance, and I have spent countless hours analyzing apparently correct queries that are misbehaving, and discovering that the culprit is a NULL. I am not able to fix root causes, when the root cause is an ERP table, or some interface table that belongs to a third party, but when designing new databases, there is no excuse. Your document is an eye opener. Thanks a lot!

From: Fabian Pascal

We believe the idea behind the paper is logically correct and user friendly. However, more research is necessary.

I recommend that you collect examples of queries misbehaving due to NULLs, it may be useful to publish them to counter all those ignorami who claim there is nothing wrong with them.

Posted 3/10/06