It is a non-null constraint, not a non-ish-null constraint You are writing an ETL process, part of this process you need to import a semi-structured file (think CSV, JSON, XM-bleurgh-L, etc.) when you import the data into an RDBMS you get all sorts of things that make schema designers excited like unique constraints and check constraints. The problem is that the file you are importing is from another system and all “other” systems in the world make mistakes and changes and send you duff data that won’t work with your lovely constraints.