[Babase] Possible Babase mistake (Biograph table)
kfenn
kfenn at princeton.edu
Wed Dec 10 12:57:50 EST 2008
Karl O. Pinc wrote:
>
> On 12/10/2008 08:49:55 AM, kfenn wrote:
>>
>> DIC1 and WIR3 were the only two I found with a blank rather than a
>> NULL name. This does not affect queries per se... Babase treats
>> NULLS as blanks and when you query for nulls or even just sort by
>> name , you see the text output with all the NULLS as blank spaces
>> (WIR3 and DIC1 are put in with the nulls). However, I put the nulls
>> in to make it look nice when you are browsing the table.
>
> There is a bit of a distinction between blank and NULL,
> sometimes it can be important. See:
> http://www.postgresql.org/docs/8.1/static/functions.html#FUNCTIONS-LOGICAL
>
> http://www.postgresql.org/docs/8.1/static/functions-comparison.html
>
>>
>> I frequently upload pregnancies as individual files when two
>> pregnancies occur in the same update period and I'm constrained by
>> the pregnancy, mtd_cycle validations of chronology. These two were
>> input in that way during the first update I did in Babase 2.0 and I
>> probably didn't specify the 'null' in the upload program.
>
> Do we need a rule saying SNAME should be NULL under this conditions?
>
It would be one less detail I have to remember in the update process.
I'm all for that!!
Sname and name should be null if the birthdate = deathdate, I think is
what we need. But Jeanne and Susan need to say because I don't know if
the old data look different. Obviously we don't want nulls overwriting
data.
Tabby
--
Tabby Fenn
Research Assistant
Dept of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
401 Guyot Hall
Princeton University
Princeton, NJ 08544
609 258-6898 (Ph)
609 258-2712 (Fx)
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