Oracle FAQ Your Portal to the Oracle Knowledge Grid
HOME | ASK QUESTION | ADD INFO | SEARCH | E-MAIL US
 

Home -> Community -> Mailing Lists -> Oracle-L -> Re: unknown value

Re: unknown value

From: <Jared.Still_at_radisys.com>
Date: Tue, 07 May 2002 12:13:54 -0800
Message-ID: <F001.0045A633.20020507121354@fatcity.com>


The bigger question is why are these part of a primary key if they are not known or required?

If they are not known ahead of time, you can't even use them in a unique index.

If you are loading this data for later cleanup, why do you even need a key? Use it as a staging table and then load the real one when your data is clean.

Jared

Gurelei <gurelei_at_yahoo.com>
Sent by: root_at_fatcity.com
05/07/2002 09:28 AM
Please respond to ORACLE-L  

        To:     Multiple recipients of list ORACLE-L <ORACLE-L_at_fatcity.com>
        cc: 
        Subject:        unknown value


Hi all:

This is probably a simple question, but then again may be not. We are developing an application and will be loading data into bunch of tables. We will have a situation where some of the values will not be provided
for various reasons. We don't want to make them NULL because some of these fields are part of a PK so we decided to come up with some values to mean "unknown". Is there any reason NOT to use a question mark as such a value for char strings? To me it sounds like a character is a characted and question mark shouldn't be
treated differently then, say, an "X". Is there a situation when having "?" in a character field instead of a letter can create problems?

thank you

Gene



Do You Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Health - your guide to health and wellness http://health.yahoo.com
--

Please see the official ORACLE-L FAQ: http://www.orafaq.com
--

Author: Gurelei
  INET: gurelei_at_yahoo.com
Fat City Network Services    -- (858) 538-5051  FAX: (858) 538-5051
San Diego, California        -- Public Internet access / Mailing Lists
--------------------------------------------------------------------
To REMOVE yourself from this mailing list, send an E-Mail message to: ListGuru_at_fatcity.com (note EXACT spelling of 'ListGuru') and in the message BODY, include a line containing: UNSUB ORACLE-L (or the name of mailing list you want to be removed from). You may also send the HELP command for other information (like subscribing).

--

Please see the official ORACLE-L FAQ: http://www.orafaq.com
--

Author:
  INET: Jared.Still_at_radisys.com

Fat City Network Services    -- (858) 538-5051  FAX: (858) 538-5051
San Diego, California        -- Public Internet access / Mailing Lists
--------------------------------------------------------------------
To REMOVE yourself from this mailing list, send an E-Mail message to: ListGuru_at_fatcity.com (note EXACT spelling of 'ListGuru') and in the message BODY, include a line containing: UNSUB ORACLE-L (or the name of mailing list you want to be removed from). You may also send the HELP command for other information (like subscribing). Received on Tue May 07 2002 - 15:13:54 CDT

Original text of this message

HOME | ASK QUESTION | ADD INFO | SEARCH | E-MAIL US