Re: Field naming: Same name represents different data

Why would it be bad practice to use the user's preferred terminology? Users understand that the age of an employee is different from the age of a receivable is different from the age of a block of cheese. Don't they?

"- g r e g -" <gwarnick_at_fhcrc.org> wrote in message news:3E5A58D7.6090200_at_fhcrc.org...
> While not great practice (I'd be frustrated) I don't know of any rule
> that says that it cannot be done. There may be an internal procedure
> at your office/site that precludes one from creating in one database
> two different 'meanings' for the same named domain. But, off the top
> of my head, if you run a cheese ordering buisiness, you might have a
> database where the domain named AGE in one table contains the value of
> a cheese-maker's age code, while another table flags boolean values
> for a past due bill into the domain AGE. Yeah, its silly and surely a
> bad practice, but not against the rules, I believe.
> Greg
>
>
> Lee C. wrote:
> > I am still fairly new to database design and analysis. I have just
> > come across a database that frequently uses the same field name to
> > represent different data (data that would be from different domains).
> > When tablename.fieldname is considered, of course, the names are
> > unique. I thought there was a general rule about this, but cannot
> > find any relevant information. Can someone please point me directly
> > to an online source that will help me to understand this?
> >
> > Thanks.
>
Received on Mon Feb 24 2003 - 19:11:16 CET