Handling of NULL values

There is a technical difference between the statements value does not exist (NULL value) and value is not specified (string with the length null). PPM database extractors can differentiate between NULL values and empty strings.

However, the database systems supported by PPM behave differently. When extracting source system data using PPM extractors, they can exhibit different reactions to NULL and "".

Oracle

Data fields containing empty strings or without content are read as NULL.

SQL Server and DB2

Empty strings are returned when inserting/updating.

Missing columns are returned as NULL for INSERT.