Currently, the schema key is 'not null'.

So we see things like 'not null' => FALSE and 'not null' => TRUE.

It takes the brain an extra cycle to decipher this. (To reduce this one level of negativity). Why not do 'null' => FALSE instead? It will be easier on the brain.

(Or we could have 'nullable' instead of 'null'.)

Also, perhaps we should remove any defaults (that is, any 'not null' => FALSE (decipher that! ;-)). I guess these defaults serve as "documentation", but, since they aren't very dissimilar visually from 'not null' => TRUE, they don't really "catch the eye".

All in all, I understand all this is a matter of personal taste. I have a feeling this issue will
be marked 'wontfix' and ...I'm alright with this. I mainly want to take the burden off my heart.

Comments

mooffie’s picture

mooffie commented
Title: 'null' instead of 'not null' » Suggestion: Have 'null' instead of 'not null'
Version: 7.x-dev » 8.x-dev
sdsheridan’s picture

sdsheridan
he/him/his
commented

My only two bits on this is "not null", or "NN", is a very common notation and convention in information engineering, along with "no dups" (duplicates), or "ND". My ERDs are peppered with "NN", and "ND" notations, that clearly indicate what attributes of an entity-type must have values and must be unique respectively. And in combination, of course, "NN" and "ND" signify candidate keys, and at the very least, I know where I need unique indexes in the physical data model. So, going from that discipline of information engineering to the Drupal schema, at least with "not null", it is in synch with the way a number of folks would do a logical data model.

However, that's not a show-stopper for a change, so... :-)

What would be kind of cool is that given "schema" already is an abstraction of the physical data model, removing the DDL, that if there was a new key value of "no dups" = { TRUE | FALSE }, an appropriate unique key constraint would be automatically created as part of the resulting DDL. Just a thought...

jody lynn’s picture

jody lynn
she/her
Primary language English
commented
Status: Active » Closed (won't fix)

'not null' is just a property of a database field