Re: Expressing SQL in relational algebra

> Prepending every relation name with a fixed prefix reduces brevity
> without any compensating benefit. The "T_" part of the name is truly
> meaningless, and if you are arguing that abstract, meaningless names
> are appropriate in simple examples, I would agree and suggest an
> abstract name that is wholly and clearly abstract. By informal
> convention, foo is often used for this purpose in computing examples,
> and single letter names are often used in mathematics.
> I still see no sensible reason to prepend every relation name with
> "T_", and I observe that your objection makes no attempt to provide
> one.

While the "T_" prefix does not make much sense in context of the simple discussion at hand, it is just an arbitrary convention I have used to help distinguish things in larger VB projects that interfaced to Tables, Queries, Forms, Macro, Modules, etc. The "T_", "F_", "Q_", "Mc_", "M_" prefixes served a function similar to that of the data type prefixes for variable names such as p for pointer, h for handle, i for integer, chk for checkbox, cbo for combo box, etc. See chapter 9, Power of Data Names, in "Code Complete" by Steve McConnell, Microsoft Press, ISBN 1-55615-484-4 for a discussion of the advantages of naming conventions. Received on Thu Apr 10 2003 - 06:13:17 CEST