The key to working with null values properly is to accommodate them consistently. Learn a few tricks that will help you do just that.
by Susan Sales Harkins
August 11, 2009
espite having a good understanding of the term null, most developers still fail to adequately accommodate null values in their databases. Accommodating null values appropriately is an important part of protecting the validity of your data. At the very least, mismanaging nulls leads to erroneous data. If you don't catch the bad data, it could lead to unsound business decisions.
The concept of null is often misunderstood. Some experts describe null as nothing or an empty value. In other words, no value has been entered for that entity. Others describe a null value as an unknown value. The value may or may not exist, but it is presently unknown. Technically, the ANSI standard states that null is not a data value, but an indicator that data is missing.
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espite having a good understanding of the term null, most developers still fail to adequately accommodate null values in their databases. Accommodating null values appropriately is an important part of protecting the validity of your data. At the very least, mismanaging nulls leads to erroneous data. If you don't catch the bad data, it could lead to unsound business decisions.
