Re: reserved words

> Once you use a reserved keyword in your day-to-day operations, you are
forever stuck with using
> the escape sequence (quoting) and someone, possibly your successor, will
be forever cursing the
> decision as they and others will forget to escape the keyword.

that's two characters added to USER...versus AT LEAST two characters for the longer description.
i.e. USER_A...i don't see the argument there. two characters maximum the former...two characters minimum the latter. and, it don't take a genious to interpret the error returned by using a keyword.

> Besides, 'USER' is only useful for a few days. Then someone changes the
specs and says 'this
> kind of user' and you need to add a new column 'USER2'. So why not switch
to 'USER1' or
> 'LOGON_USER' or something else now?

well, if USER is a foreign key linking into a TYPES_OF_USERS table (which is exactly what i'm doing), then i fail to see your point again. adding a descriptive for USER would make it less meaninful w/n the joined queries it is used in...users do many things and play many roles...describing USER would make it more descriptive to one activity over another.

my VOX has many years of X behind it. and, while i tend to stay away from using reserved words, when your X begins to work with homogenous systems, i.e. ms sql server, oracle, terra-data, etc. you'll quickly find you can't avoid stepping on someone's "reserved" toes...you'll also find that you make it a common practice to escape all of your columns and tables to avoid such a mess.

thanks for your lecture though...alegebraically, i now know the value of your X. (i hope you get the pun.) Received on Wed Jul 23 2003 - 22:17:58 CDT