The UNKNOWNs

Within the colony of Integers was introduced a mutant called NULL. Prior to the arrival of NULL, life in this camp was simple; they lived or dreamed in 2—D, everything was either a True or False. But ever since NULL habituated and started making his appearances in the gathering, things were no longer 2-D. Now their imagination needed to be extended to a third plane of reference called the UNKNOWN. Hence forth, anything which couldn't be answered by the original language was attributed to this new dimension – the UNKNOWN.

  • NULL > 100: UNKNOWN
  • NULL = NULL: UNKNOWN
  • NULL + x > y; UNKNOWN

Since not everyone agreed to the existence of the UNKNOWN, there was a bifurcation in the colony - Atheists and the Advocates. Atheists, opposed to the idea of UNKNOWN, were mainly composed of ON, WHERE and HAVING and their belief was that Unknown is the same as FALSE. Advocates were the ones who proposed and stuck to the idea of UNKNOWN.

There was also a third minority group consisting of CHECK who would believe that UNKNOWN is the same as TRUE. So if you gave CHECK a job to ensure only 18+ are allowed in, and if someone disclosed their age as UNKNOWN, CHECK would register that as TRUE

Learning from other campers experience, PRIMARY KEY, GROUP and ORDER devised a universal rule which meant all NULLS ARE equal i.e. NULL = NULL comparison yields TRUE as the result

Wasn't life simple in 2-D, reminisce the original inhabitants