Posted by Hugo Kornelis on 10/01/03 11:42

On 14 Mar 2006 07:21:43 -0800, jim_geissman@countrywide.com wrote:

>Some columns in transaction tables are "mandatory fields" on the data
>entry screens, and as a result tend to accumulate junk entries, where
>the user puts something, anything, in the window in order to get the
>GUI to accept the screen. This filler isn't as elaborate as Lorem
>Ipsum, but more likely characters from adjacent keys on the second row
>of the keyboard, like "lkjkljl". This non-data gets in the way of
>applications that use the data. I wonder if there is a way to
>recognize and ignore this stuff -- I would assume it's a well-known
>problem, but I haven't found any literature on it. Any pointers
>welcome. And sorry if this is off-topic for a DB group.

Hi Jim,

If it is acceptable that people enter rubbish in a field, even so
acceptable that you try to work around the rubbish in your queries, why
even bother to make the field mandatory? Just make it optional - people
won't have to make up rubbish and you can just filter out all NULLs.

All fields, both optional and mandatory, should always have a thorough
checking of the entered data **BEFORE** accepting the input into the
database. Of course, there's only so much you can do. It's much easier
to define a sanity check on an age column than a sanity check on an
address column - after all, "msdfmtry" might sound very unbelievable to
you, but it might be a perfectly valid street name in some foreign
country that your company has to do business with tomorrow.

--
Hugo Kornelis, SQL Server MVP

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