NULL

I'm working on a few sprocs for our schedule and I'm about to throw myself head first through the window.  Some of the courses in our schedule do not have a "part_id" to identify them.  Basically, they are courses that our corporate HQ doesn't consider official, so I have no outlines, books, exercise files, etc for these courses.  No problem.  In those cases, it looks like they've used NULL to indicate the lack of a part_id.  Sometimes, they've taken that to the extreme.  Some records have a NULL value, others have the text "NULL."  Argh.

Speaking of data entry, I did some work for a company whose whole system somehow came to a halt when someone tried to insert "#1 UK Fan" as someone's first name.  That was their legal name. 

Edit: I felt it was important to mention that I was no anywhere NEAR the database design or the application which created this mess.  I simply recieved a CSV file to work with...