> My particular question is regarding '-2' score for mapping numbers
> to 'unknown'.
>
> Why do you consider it such an important use-case? In my opinion,
> such usage is just waste of resources and traffic,
I am sometimes round-tripping magic constants to tell which part of a, say,
UNION actually returned the result(s), based on which knowledge the EMR
UI will behave slightly differently (say, one is retrieving medications,
by matching either of product name or active ingredient, all in
one query).
I needn't roundtrip ints, sure, but...
Karsten