2015-05-01
1,802 reads
NULL
Database Design Follies: NULL vs. NOT NULL
It sounds simple enough. Either your column will always have a value or it may not. Yet somehow such a seemingly simple decision can become a never-ending debate where database schema begins to resemble superstition and designing effective tables seems more contentious than you expected it to be.
2016-02-26 (first published: 2014-10-30)
27,437 reads
2014-03-27
2,370 reads
2013-06-05
2,459 reads
2013-05-10
2,273 reads
2012-05-11
3,361 reads
Working with null values in SQL XML
We all know NULL values must be dealt with carefully in T-SQL, but how exactly do you best deal with them in SQL XML?
2010-10-26
27,858 reads
2010-06-17
3,967 reads
2010-04-07
4,062 reads
Accommodating Null Values in SQL Server
The key to working with null values properly is to accommodate them consistently. Learn a few tricks that will help you do just that.
2009-09-16
4,497 reads
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Question of the Day
ORDER BY alias
There is a table tmp_tab:
CREATE TABLE tmp_tab ( id int, val int );
INSERT INTO tmp_tab VALUES (1, 1), (2, NULL), (3, 3), (4, 4), (5, 5);You want to order the rows ids by the following expression:
ISNULL(val, id) + 1Which of the following queries produces the expected ordering and why? (Select all correct) See possible answers