Right, I am a fan of SQL NULl as well. It is nicely consistent - anything NULL in - you get NULL out. Clearly telling that you get undefined data. Silently converting to empty string, zero, or therelike would eventually return garbage for harder to debug reasons.
Re: Silently converting to empty string, zero, or therelike would eventually return garbage for harder to debug reasons.
It's never been a problem with strings in my many decades of experience, unless somebody does something which I consider poor system engineering. Nearby I invited a solid use-case illustrating a real string need.
That Oracle behavior annoys me each time, though.