Re: '= NULL' is not the same as 'IS NULL'

> I'm afraid so, in Joe Celko's "SQL for Smarties" book, after which I simply
> accepted that that was the way SQL worked.

Yes for what I recall from my reading that he mentions that there are specific reasons to allow
nulls.  During Table design, if one cannot see how these specific rules apply to the data to of a
column, then the column should be constrained as NOT NULL, with a DEFAULT value as '{left blank}'
or 0 or some other value that would produce this effect.

But I am sure that this is just one particular philosophy of table design.

Regards,

Richard Broersma Jr.