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