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03.05.2007 at 03:16AM PST, ID: 22427846
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7.6

Relational database design - using nulls

Asked by higgsy in Databases Miscellaneous, MS SQL Server

Hello,

I have a question regarding relational database design, and primarily the use of nulls. I have a table that holds information on press releases, which looks like so.

releaseID Int NOT NULL IDENTITY(1,1),
title VarChar(100) Not Null,
body VarChar(8000),
pdfVersion VarChar(255),
publicationDate DateTime

Sometimes, the press release will be HTML code, stored in the body field, other times we only have a pdf and therefore the body field is null, and the pdfVersion field references the filename of the pdf.

We are currently re-designing the database, and i want to ensure our database is indeed a relational database, which to my understanding should not have any nulls. The only solution i see for an example like above, is to create 2 extra tables, 1 to store the pdfVersion, and 1 to store the body. Is this type of solution the best. If i employ this solution throughout the entire database im sure it will mean there is a hige amount of additional tables, and will also make any code a lot more complex.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance

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[+][-]03.05.2007 at 03:28AM PST, ID: 18653637

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[+][-]03.05.2007 at 04:29AM PST, ID: 18653826

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Zones: Databases Miscellaneous, MS SQL Server
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Solution Provided By: opho
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[+][-]03.05.2007 at 07:42AM PST, ID: 18654956

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[+][-]04.12.2007 at 01:20AM PDT, ID: 18896350

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