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Home -> Community -> Mailing Lists -> Oracle-L -> Re:Database design dilemma - not null vs nullable
Siv,
There are a number of third party applications that take this bend, like PeopleSlop for instance. The benefit to them is not having to handle nulls. Oracle has a nasty habit of sending back the old "ORA-01045: fetched column value is NULL" error message if you don't handle the NULL correctly with an indicator variable. From your point of view the DB is storing a whole lot of trash data depending on the number of tables, columns, and rows. Indexes get interesting too since null rows are not indexed, but a single space is. Do I like it, no way in hell, but when your dealing with a third party there isn't much you can really do.
Dick Goulet
____________________Reply Separator____________________Subject: Database design dilemma - not null vs nullable Author: "Siv Chelakkara" <Siv.Chelakkara_at_3cc.co.wayne.mi.us> Date: 1/5/2001 10:21 AM
Hi all,
We have an outside vendor developing an application, which we will ultimately inherit for maintenance. They are porting this application from a different database platform to Oracle, since we are an Oracle shop. They have decided to make every column in every table a NOT NULL column. They want to implement default values at the database level for every column (' ', 0 and some low date for varchar2, number and date) and then let the application validate and enforce significant data as required. I am looking for opinions on the pros and cons of this type of approach, both from a database and application point of view.
Thanks,
Siv
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Author: Siv Chelakkara
INET: Siv.Chelakkara_at_3cc.co.wayne.mi.us
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