Somebody created a new database field of type varchar(10) and then filled it with the string 'NULL' for every row. Now, everybody is having to figure out for themselves that these aren't actual NULL values when running scripts.

Because NULL isn't theoretically a value? Quite the opposite, it should make for an *absence* of it. That said, you should hunt down your former colleague.

@ridsatrio Microsoft defines NULL as distinct from an empty value. It's an unknown value. It's why we can check for NULL, but we cannot compare two NULLs because they can never be equal. I'm deferring to MS since this project in question is using MS SQL Server.

https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us...(v=sql.105).aspx