Re: On specialization constraints time of application

Snipped
> The world of practice is full of people whose professional development
> consists almost entirely of OOP, and who are suddenly coming up to speed on
> both SQL and database design.  Not only that, but they have a very short
> deadline to produce deliverables,  and an intentionally narrow view of the
> value of stored data.  These people often unconsciously associate meanings
> with nulls that go way beyond anything that you or the experts you cite
> would accept as a useful meaning for that symbol.  If you ask them, they
> will revert to the meaning that they attach to a pointer that doesn't point
> anywhere.  In that world, promoting some sort of "best practice" in
> restricting the use of null tends to fall on deaf ears.
Time constraints are not a good excuse for doing poor design since using NULLS will crunch time over the entire system lifecycle. For instance the time of maintainance of a system using NULLS is far more important than a system that does not use them, increasing TCO by orders of magnitude.

Because they ignore RM definitions about, SQL developpers also ignore that drawbacks of using nulls far outweights any advantages. Promoting best practices can not replace a formal education about RM. Received on Sun Jun 14 2009 - 15:24:37 CEST