Hi,

Layering an application is an essential part of good software development.  Decoupling system components makes maintainability easier.  One such layer that I frequently employ is the Data layer.  This layer is responsible for executing stored procedures and also retrieving field values.

e.g. myDataLayer.GetString(datareader, fieldname, String.Empty);

      myDataLayer.GetInt(datareader, fieldname, Int32.MinValue);

Note : C# example

In this way it is the data layer that deals with nulls, or I could move null handling into the stored procedure level.  Either way it soes not effect the rest of my code.

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