[Year 12 IT Apps] The sample ITA questions -- Number 3in Section B

[Timmer-Arends]

Hello Mark K and Matt

1. So Access doesn't have a true Boolean datatype.... and neither does Filemaker (one uses a number field with values of non-zero or 0). Which RDBMS does have a fair dinkum native Boolean datatype?

Access does have a "fair dinkum" Boolean data type - it's a 1 bit field and that means it can be either 0 or 1 and you can't get much more Boolean than that. Null is not allowed. As the setter-upper of the db you can choose a number of ways to display it, the default being yes/no.

2. I always thought Boolean operators were:
NOT
OR
AND
Thus in the sample paper M / F the Boolean operator would OR?

But the question doesn't ask about operator (or have I missed something?). It asks about data type and I agree with other comments: F/M is the only possible answer because it's a two value field, but I wouldn't have thought it would be a good idea for a number of reasons including every time you want to display it you have to do an IF operation (IF(gender,"Female","Male") or something), also, in Access at least, NULL would not be allowed and I can think of circumstances where this would a be valid entry (for example, maybe we just don't know, in which case NULL would be more valid than a forced True or False)

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