Oral Tradition Check: Two Hundred Meanings for "NULL" in SQL

Posted by Thomas L Holaday on Programmers See other posts from Programmers or by Thomas L Holaday
Published on 2011-03-18T20:37:13Z Indexed on 2011/03/19 0:18 UTC
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sql

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considered-harmful

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polysemes

Two decades ago, the topic of "NULL" came up in conversation with a scholarly colleague. As I remember it, he said that C.J.Date, in an essay critical of commercial implementations of SQL, had listed over two hundred meanings for NULL. To my regret, I did not persist the details; but finding that list has since been on my Bucket List.

Has anyone else heard this legend? Was it perhaps not Date, but another critic of commercial implementations of SQL?

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