Oracle treating empty string as NULL problem for a Java / JPA programmer

Question

How do you handle this situation where Oracle stores the empty string as a null in the database ?

I would like it to be stored as an empty string as it is not as NULL, s

Answer 1

Yup, that's the way Oracle functions. Empty strings are treated as nulls.

You can of course "fix" this on application level - for example by storing " " values as you suggested - but first consider, what exactly is the difference with your "empty string" values compared to NULL values? Why do you need to treat them differently? I used to run into this dilemma, too, but usually found out that there are very few cases where I really need to tell the difference.