On Thu, 2005-11-17 at 13:36, Eric E wrote: > Eric E wrote: > > >> maybe you can solve it adding a new col and allow both to contain > >> null values. > >> > >> if these are not mutually exclusive you can avoid a check if they are > >> check that if one has a non-null value other has null... > > > > I did think about that, but I disliked the idea of two fields of nulls > > for every one full field.... maybe it's not as bad a way of doing it > > as I thought. > > BTW, in most cases I have 5+ tables to do this, so that's 4+ fields of > null in each row... Could you use some kind of intermediate join table, so that it pointed to orders and then products / customers / othermidlevel tables pointed to it, and so did the problems table? ---------------------------(end of broadcast)--------------------------- TIP 2: Don't 'kill -9' the postmaster
