CompuServe Messages

Mike, you probably don't want to hear about more work, but I have a suggestion for SuperBase :-). In my version (SuperBase Pro 3.02 10 Mar 89), uninitialized fields behave differently than fields set to some default. But there seems to be no way to test to see if a field is uninitialized. What would be nice is if there were two system values called, say, Unknown and Unknowable (to steal some thoughts from Codd). A field would be initialized to Unknown when a record is created, and you could test for this in the usual ways. A field could be set to Unknowable if it was Unknown and also not possible to be known (e.g the number of babies a male patient has had). I think these would be very useful. Setting an initial value in the fields definition would require setting aside some value from that data item that had more than one meaning, a valid value and the uninitialized value, which might be awkward. Just my thoughts, anyhow.