[recursive]

You put a record in the Measurement table, and none in the Value table.

> But honestly that level of normalization is much more work than it's worth

Yes. I question whether it's worth anything to begin with.

[rawgabbit]

     Select M.*, V.* from Measurement as M left outer join Value_table as V…

You end up with nulls again.

[recursive]

Yes. That's part of the semantics of outer joins.

But there is no stored null representing 'no value'.