Nulls are Evil

re: Nulls are Evil

Jerry — Thu, 02 Jun 2005 03:50:48 GMT

<grin>Dude, what a zero of a blog entry</grin>

re: Nulls are Evil

The Contrarian — Thu, 02 Jun 2005 04:20:40 GMT

I must disagree. Nulls transcend not only truth but the injustice of structure. They represent the ability of man to overcome the academic constraints of normalism. They are the bar-benders of databases incarcerated out of sight of performance's polite society, whilst null-wielding, website-supporting data layers drink from the overflowing cup of denormalized structures.

Nulls click their heels and take flight, soaring over the cries of anguished DBAs, with near-imperceptible beats of flexible, lightweight wings.

Canutic procrastinators sit self-satisfied whilst the majestic white-crested tide advances unknowably towards them, its strength born of the tumultuous forces present yet unseen within its troughts. The humble developer approaching such magnificence has but a simple choice to make: surf, or sink.

re: Nulls are Evil

Don Demsak — Thu, 02 Jun 2005 05:32:51 GMT

Nulls can't be anti-matter, since anti-matter is still something, and null is the absence of everything.

Nulls are a vacuum, and you know nature abhors a vacuum.

re: Nulls are Evil

Jim — Thu, 02 Jun 2005 05:57:27 GMT

Was it too much coffee, a long stack trace, or a late night that caused this blog?

Ontology of null

Brain.Save() — Thu, 02 Jun 2005 07:29:32 GMT

Ontology of null

Brain.Save() — Thu, 02 Jun 2005 07:30:09 GMT

re: Nulls are Evil

thomas woelfer — Thu, 02 Jun 2005 11:12:31 GMT

Matt,

i assume you would be the perfect person to help me in my struggles concerning non-nullable types be added to the clr asap. even a [NonNullable] attribute would be extremely helpful - it would make nullpointer errors, a major industrie problem, go away in a second...

given the current hooply about nullable types (whoever though _that_ would be helpful... ?) - adding non-nullable should be trivial for the clr guys.

WM_<G>
thomas woelfer

re: Nulls are Evil

Matt — Thu, 02 Jun 2005 16:29:00 GMT

Agreed.

There is something inately incorrect about storing "nothing" or the "absence of something" in your data model and especially your database. When has the assumption of "If it doesn't exist, THEN IT SHOULD NOT EXIST" change into "If it doesn't exist, MARK IT AS NULL."

Now, I'm not religious to the point of NEVER using them; but they are, at least, a harbringer of pause and a catalyst to momentarily say "Are we doing something wrong here?"

re: Nulls are Evil

mattwar — Fri, 03 Jun 2005 05:48:09 GMT

I have to admit, antimatter was a bit of a stretch.

re: Nulls are Evil

jonnosan — Tue, 07 Jun 2005 14:30:58 GMT

Relax. Embrace the void. Coalesce, even.

re: Nulls are Evil

mattwar — Thu, 09 Jun 2005 04:10:00 GMT

Coalescence? That's just pretending the problem does not exist, converting nulls into meta-nulls.

re: Nulls are Evil

Null Vader — Wed, 15 Jun 2005 11:29:23 GMT

Join the dark side, Matt.

re: Nulls are Evil

Richard@Home — Mon, 20 Jun 2005 14:41:17 GMT

Just a minor point:

Null doesn't mean 'nothing', it means 'unknown' - and there is definitely a need to differentiate between the two.

If something is nothing, it's value is known (it's value is nothing). If it is not known then it's not nothing until its been confirmed. Then it would be nothing, not Null.

Ouch, my head hurts.

re: Null Streams

Glenn Morton — Thu, 23 Jun 2005 19:43:03 GMT

i have almost finsihed developing a id3 library, however; for every method that parses in a stream as a parameter i check to see if the stream is null, is this good practice, over kill, or not necessary at all?? any help would be much appreciated?

thanks

glenn morton

re: Nulls are Evil

Diego — Thu, 30 Jun 2005 08:35:04 GMT

<i>Richard@Home wrote:
Null doesn't mean 'nothing', it means 'unknown' - and there is definitely a need to differentiate between the two. </i>

I almost disagree. A null value represents a row that should not exist, in a table that should exist but doesn't. Hence, and following relational theory, null means "there is no element in this set that corresponds to the primary key trough the mapping function".

IMO, if this translates better to “unknown” or to “nothing” depends on the semantics of the column.

In most cases, I rather prefer allowing for a default value of “0” (meaning "Undefined") to my codified columns than to allow for nulls.

On some other cases, like a MiddleName column, I would allow for null values, but even then, it is likely that assuming a meaning of "nothing" for a null value is safe.

В чём опасность использования null?

Олег Михайлик — Tue, 19 Jul 2005 09:27:18 GMT