Counting Rows

  • If your response to my argument is to call me numerically illiterate, then we are done.

    Please accept my apologies for wasting your and my time.


    Hugo Kornelis, SQL Server/Data Platform MVP (2006-2016)
    Visit my SQL Server blog: https://sqlserverfast.com/blog/
    SQL Server Execution Plan Reference: https://sqlserverfast.com/epr/

  • Hugo Kornelis (9/3/2015)


    If your response to my argument is to call me numerically illiterate, then we are done.

    Please accept my apologies for wasting your and my time.

    That's not my response. I didn't call you numerically illiterate. I don't believe for one moment that you would have objected if the ANSI workgroup/committee had decide to make the answer 0 instead of NULL (you've clearly said that you believe that there are arguments both ways), and it's the people who would object to that whom I think are numerically illiterate.

    People who think it could go both ways are clearly not numerically illiterate, since numerically illiterate people always think their view is the only possible one, and fail to understand that different answers inevitably turn up in different contexts. I suspect the decision was as it was because Oracle and IBM had both got it wrong, and a standard which contradicted both of them would have been a rather pointless standard unless they would commit to changing (which they wouldn't), and in that respect the decision was probably "right", at least "right" in the same sense that the decision to make Fortran IV represent the LCD of the various manufacturers' capabilities had been at a rather earlier date.

    Tom

  • TomThomson (9/3/2015)


    numerically illiterate people always think their view is the only possible one

    :Whistling:

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