Comment by schnable
2 days ago
I agree with you within a single data domain.
But is a smart comment buried in there about ETL systems and data exchange where it's pretty easy, and arguably correctly in some cases, to get "null" in an exported field. Then the importing system, again arguable correctly, needs to handle the null case as a true null, not "null." I'm not sure there is a very easy fix for this or an obvious best practice.
Again, there is a misunderstanding.
"null" is not the same as null. One is an opaque string, the other is a language value. One should NEVER build systems that confuse the two, or allow one to be interpreted as the other.
If you export data, export nulls as nulls, not "nulls". If you import data, NEVER interpret what's inside strings.