June 2010
Intermediate to advanced
328 pages
7h 51m
English
Content preview from SQL Antipatterns
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Antipattern: Use Null as an Ordinary Value, or Vice Versa
Many software developers are caught off-guard by the behavior of null in SQL. Unlike in most programming languages, SQL treats null as a special value, different from zero, false, or an empty string. This is true in standard SQL and most brands of database. However, in Oracle and Sybase, null is exactly the same as a string of zero length. The null value follows some special behavior, too.
Using Null in Expressions
One case that surprises some people is when you perform arithmetic on a column or expression that is null. For example, many programmers would expect the result to be 10 for bugs that have been given no estimate in the hours column, but instead the query returns null.
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