Re: Naming Convention for Columns

> > Be consistent. NEVER mix upper and lower case in column names. You
> > won't believe how much hair you'll rip out the 5th time you've
 retyped
> > a simple query b/c you have mixed case in Sybase.
>
> This is very good advice, particularly considering that you never
> know when you'll have to port to a database that doesn't support
> mixed case anyway, and it'll just be dumb luck that thru the process
> of mangling by multiple maintainers, to get something like both
> "lcFlag" and "lcflag" in the same table. (Hey, in 200+ columns
> and the 8th person to "fix" something, it could happen!)

Ah, but what happens when your all lowercase, underbar separated column names get sucked into a C++ class? Most of the code I see in C++ these days is capital letter separated, not all lowercase and underbar separated. Especially if you know you won't be porting to something so primative in this day and age that it doesn't support letter case. As for which to actually choose, you tell me which has the best combination of space savings (and keystoke typing savings) and readability at 2am fixing a hong kong production problem from NYC:

	setldateovrd
	setl_date_ovrd
	setlDateOvrd

You can make a case for the second or third but not the first.

Why am I sticking my $0.02 into this potential religious war? Received on Sun Mar 08 1998 - 00:00:00 CST