Re: NULLs in unique indexes; Was: Oracle purchases

On Thu, 2006-02-16 at 06:27, Alban Hertroys wrote:
> Vivek Khera wrote:
> > http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.1/en/bdb-restrictions.html
> >
> > I especially like the third restriction. How on earth do people live
> > with this software?
>
> That's the part where they allow only one NULL value in a unique index,
> right? Opinions seem to differ on this matter...
>

ISTM the part that is bad on this is not that whether you allow multiple
nulls in a unique index (as some dbs do) or that you allow a single null
in a unique index (as other dbs do), either behvior can be argued for.
The thing that get's me is that as a mysql developer you really can't be
sure of the behavior you are going to get unless you can enforce a
specific table handler which therefore requires that you require a
specific storage engine for that installation. ISTM this is asking for a
lot of knowledge of mysql internals for the average front end
developer.

Robert Treat
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