> I don't think I need to explain why it's a bad idea for a database to be so careless about data validation.
Well, loose typing can be extremely useful, and having a type of "ANY" would not replace it.
I have built recently an accounting reconciliation system to find discrepancies in data coming from a large variety of sources: some from proper database engines (MySQL MariaDB), but most from proprietary systems that export to CSV. It's amazing how corrupt data can become: dates that are invalid, numbers that aren't numbers, strings strings strings everywhere.
Being able to store the data into tables that have types, but can accept anything, is simply great.
Well, loose typing can be extremely useful, and having a type of "ANY" would not replace it.
I have built recently an accounting reconciliation system to find discrepancies in data coming from a large variety of sources: some from proper database engines (MySQL MariaDB), but most from proprietary systems that export to CSV. It's amazing how corrupt data can become: dates that are invalid, numbers that aren't numbers, strings strings strings everywhere.
Being able to store the data into tables that have types, but can accept anything, is simply great.