can you have a no-default column; error if unspecified?

[Bennett Haselton <bennett@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Is it possible to set a column to have no possible default value, so if you 
try to create a record that doesn't specify a value for that column, you'll 
get an error?

For example, if I have a table where the "date" field should always be 
set.  I took out the default "NULL" value, but that just gave it a default 
value of 0000-00-00.  What I want to ensure is that it's not possible to 
create a record for which the date value hasn't been specified.

(Yes, there's a certain amount of responsibility that's up to the user of 
the table to remember to set these things, but you should always write 
lower-level constructs to ensure that, to the maximum extent possible, 
errors will be harder to commit when making usage of those constructs at a 
higher level.  That goes for tables at the lower level and insertions into 
those tables at the higher level.)

	-Bennett

bennett@xxxxxxxxxxxxx     http://www.peacefire.org
(425) 649 9024


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