Re: [Treebase-devel] null@submission.user_id

[William P. <wil...@ya...>]

On Dec 22, 2009, at 11:44 AM, Hilmar Lapp wrote:

> What is supposed to be in this column? I gather that if null values are in the column, then the data model actually permits this value to be missing. If the application code assumes that it is always present, then either it is making a wrong assumption and needs to be fixed, or the data model is wrong in that it ought to be mandating a value for the column.

The problem is because our TB1->TB2 migration violates constraints for normal operation. Under normal operation, each submission has an owner_id, a FK to the users table. But since data that are migrated to TB2 lacks a submitter, this FK remains null. 

I propose that I create a special new user who will serve as a placeholder for the migrated data, and then just update the submission table, replacing NULL with the ID of this special user. 

bp