Lookups/Joins propagating 0 instead of NULL - what the hell did the developers of DataStage not get about the concept of NULL?
I was driven quite crazy by DataStage when I set up a lookup stage where the main input does not necessarily find a companion in the input link. All the numerical columns of no-matches got the value 0 assigned. I checked whether I happened to have defined a default - nope. I checked whether the output link column is nullable - yes it is. May seasoned DS colleague double checked - and had no idea why. Some forum of entry of 2005 told me that also the INPUT column must be nullable - bingo! It was not, changing it to nullable (maybe one has to have some stage element between the lookup and a source like a database connection) et voilà the desired and expected behaviour manifested. I tried to use a Modify stage for this purpose such that it gets clear that the change is fully intentional but it aborted gibbering something about enablePrinting . I suppose other stages like Merge will have the same problem but I did not check. @ Those developers: NULL is not 0. It means "we do...