Re:Southwest cancels 5,400 flights in less than 48 hours
by CydeWeys on Tuesday December 27, 2022 @12:48PM
(#34151352)
> I think that databases need to have the concept of NaN for dates and time stamps, except that this should be configurable to something like a poop emoji or something like ⁉
How about just NULL?
Re:Southwest cancels 5,400 flights in less than 48 hours
by Gwypaas on Tuesday December 27, 2022 @12:53PM
(#34151414)
"The server returned an unexpected error."
Now GLHF!
Re:Southwest cancels 5,400 flights in less than 48 hours
by Kon-Peki on Tuesday December 27, 2022 @02:27PM
(#34152660)
Making database columns nullable isn’t a free ride.
In some situations, you are trading one known point of failure for a million unknown ones. Among other problems :)
Re:Southwest cancels 5,400 flights in less than 48 hours
by CydeWeys on Tuesday December 27, 2022 @08:37PM
(#34156464)
So have another column adjacent to the date that stores an enum with an error code with a reason for why the date is missing. My point is, this is business logic, doesn't have a universally applicable definition, and should be handled on a case-by-case basis rather than trying to hard-code it into the date type in the DB.
Default date types, with some columns being nullable, work just fine for my project. I wouldn't want them to be more complicated and force me to consider additional cases, especially if those cases aren't language compatible.
Re:Southwest cancels 5,400 flights in less than 48 hours
by ncpa-cpl on Tuesday December 27, 2022 @06:16PM
(#34155216)
> How about just NULL?
Off topic, but this reminded me of:
Hello, I'm Mr. Null. My Name Makes Me Invisible to Computers
Re:Southwest cancels 5,400 flights in less than 48 hours
by SoftTalker on Tuesday December 27, 2022 @01:04PM
(#34151564)
Your database should not allow invalid values to exist. That is what check contstraints, foreign keys, NOT NULL constraints, etc. are for.
The thought was that it needs to be something that isn’t believable to a non-technical user seeing it on their computer screen. It turns out that this is not necessarily useful. I listened to a guy talking about some issues with a record; he says “1871? What’s up with that?” And then just moved on as if “well it came out of the computer, must be right” or something.
I think that databases need to have the concept of NaN for dates and time stamps, except that this should be configurable to something like a poop emoji or something like ⁉🆘. It has to be something where your grandma would look at it and confidently say “your computer is broken”