From: Martijn Tonies Date: March 16 2006 10:22am Subject: Re: Accountability with MySQL List-Archive: http://lists.mysql.com/mysql/195875 Message-Id: <00f801c648e3$8e234510$cd02a8c0@martijnws> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit From: "James Harvard" > At 7:28 pm +0100 14/3/06, Martijn Tonies wrote: > >Given that NULLs basically means the absence of a value (eg: unknown), you shouldn't be storing NULLs. > > At 1:49 pm -0500 14/3/06, Rhino wrote: > >A null means "unknown or not applicable" and is a perfectly valid value to use in many, many situations. > > > It's not often you can say that two people are quite literally arguing about nothing! :-) > James Harvard > > (... being flippant because the actual arguments started going over my head about half-a-dozen posts ago...) > We're arguing about whether or not your database design (as stored on disk) should contain NULLs. IMO: no, or at least as few as possible. Martijn Tonies Database Workbench - development tool for MySQL, and more! Upscene Productions http://www.upscene.com My thoughts: http://blog.upscene.com/martijn/ Database development questions? Check the forum! http://www.databasedevelopmentforum.com