SHADED FIELDS IN QUERY RESULTS

[manningda]

All:

New to forums, new to PL/SQL, and new to Oracle. (Basic NEWBY allaround!)

So... apologies if the following question seems elementary, or if posted elsewhere. Hopefully experience will provide for better questions and searches in future. In the meatime...

Using PL/SQL Devel 6 to access an Oracle 8i database. Noticing several query results where individual fields in individual records are appearing shaded 'pale yellow.'

First noticed this where I attepted to "synchronize" two seperate records.

For the field in question, rec1 displayed a yes/no result as 'X' and rec2 displayed a "blank" field (no shading). My effort was to match rec2 with rec1.

My update statement read:

UPDATE tblname
SET field = null
WHERE rec1

The result was the "shaded" field in rec1 where rec2 displayed no data w/no shading.

My next effort was to change NULL to "empty string" ('').

UPDATE tblname
SET field=''
WHERE rec1

PL/SQL Devel reported that the record was updated succesfully, but the shading remained.

Next returned rec1 to 'X'. Shading gone.

Has anyone else expereinced this feature and can they help explain. Finding the issue not referenced in my provided help doc's.

Shading appears to be isolated to fields displaying no data, but cannot understand what is being "indicated."

Thanks in advance!

 

[mike]

You said it correctly. The light yellow shading indicates a NULL in the field.

The shading makes it easier to tell if there is a space in the field or if there's a NULL.

Mike

 

[manningda]

Mike:

THANKS!