| Re: [stellation-res] Comments table, why insert empty comment? |
On Tue, 2002-10-01 at 20:55, Ringo De Smet wrote: > --- Ringo De Smet <ringods@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > > Can the Comments table creation be changed to allow null in the > > s_Comments column? > > Hmmm... My suggestion conflicts with this part of the database > structure documentation: > > SQL has a special NULL datatype used for missing or unknown values. The > tables defined here never contain such NULL entries -- the actual > definitions specify NOT NULL for each column. This is not written here > to allow more room for comments. > > How can we tackle this? My suggestion was phrased facetiously, but it was actually serious. If we just automatically insert "(no comment)" or some similar fixed string when the user provides a null comment, then the null/empty string problem disappears, and viewing a version log will actually ready more clearly. (It sounds to me like the root of the problem is actually a bug in oracle. From the SQL stuff that I've read, it seems to be pretty clear that for VARCHARs, a NULL and an empty string are two different things: an empty string is a string value with no characters; a NULL is the absense of a value.) -Mark -- Mark Craig Chu-Carroll, IBM T.J. Watson Research Center *** The Stellation project: Advanced SCM for Collaboration *** http://www.eclipse.org/stellation *** Work Email: mcc@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx ------- Personal Email: markcc@xxxxxxxxxxx
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