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Recent Blog Comments By Brandon

• Why NULL Values Should Not Be Used in a Database Unless Required

  Posted on Jul 29, 2011 at 5:03 PM

  @Ryan, I'm sorry, this argument is just silly. You don't "need" NULL. You also don't "need" to the character datatype. You don't "need" to store gender using boolean, or integer, or pictures. Of course, you don't "need" to be a software devel... read more »

• Why NULL Values Should Not Be Used in a Database Unless Required

  Posted on Aug 25, 2009 at 6:10 PM

  Sorry to rant, Way at the top you provided a lame example with middle name. You argue that you should store the empty string that a user input so you can't count the number of users who input an empty string. Should you also store a string of 150 spaces? Is trimming all spaces to store a... read more »

• Why NULL Values Should Not Be Used in a Database Unless Required

  Posted on Aug 25, 2009 at 5:44 PM

  Dude, NULL is VALID. Not understanding how to code with NULL is not valid. Consider a survey. If the user fails to answer a question, do you store some arbitrary value to mean "unknown" or do you store NULL? What if your survey_answers_received table has a foreign key field tha... read more »