Oracle not distinguishing between nulls and empty strings?

Question

Apparently oracle doesn\'t seem to distinguish between empty strings and nulls. E.g.

Select name from TABLE_A where id=100;
  ID   NAME
  100  null

Update          


        

Answer 1

Looks like Oracle have said that this behaviour may be change in a future release. When and which release it will be is not mentioned.

If you have access to metalink look at note: 1011340.6 (unfortunately because of restrictions I am unable to copy the contents of the note here)

If you don't have access to metalink then look look at the following from the 10g release 2 documentation here