As mentioned in other comments, there's a bunch of drawbacks with this approach, but there's a more general term "boolean blindness" [1], which is usually appli

As mentioned in other comments, there's a bunch of drawbacks with this approach, but there's a more general term "boolean blindness" [1], which is usually applied to programs (not databases). I find it useful to avoid using booleans where more descriptive types make sense (and can be used), as well as not throwing information away when it may be needed still, but to a reasonable extent. [1] https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~15150/previous-semesters/2012-spring/resources/lectures/09.pdf https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~15150/previous-semesters/2012-spring...