fetch of DB fields where null is allowed

Hello, we are going to develop a php - application with an Oracle 8 database and I am concerned if we should define fields with null allowed. In the documentation of OCIFetchInto there is an option of OCI_RETURN_NULLS mentioned. If I use this option please tell me what values are in the array if the database field is a string a number a date a LOB. If I don't use this option how can I determine e.g. if the value of the second column is null and I walk the array that the value of the second element is for the third column ? Do I have to use OCI_ASSOC instead ? Is the result array zero or one based ? Is the bug already fixed which is mentioned in the annotated manual: kboyer@matchlogic.com <mailto:kboyer@matchlogic.com> 14-Jul-2000 01:26 When using ocifetchinto, be careful with the resulting array. If the array variable is previously populated before calling ocifetchinto, and the the ocifetchinto command returns no (0) rows, the array is not overwritten. This can make you think that you actually got rows returned when you actually didn't. Thank you very mcuh, Christian Ruppnig