Re: Plural or singular table names

joe.celko_at_northface.edu says...

> >> I see a lot more authors (like Celko) go with the plural as the
> tables hold multiple instances. <<
 

> Or collective nouns:
 

> Employee = bad
> Employees = Better
> Personnel = Good

Why is Personnel better than Employees? Are you talking about people who might work for the entity but not be paid (as an example, I am writing a system for An Óige, the Irish youth hostel organisation and there are some volunteer workers there)? How about if it's only a table to do with pay?

Suppose that you have a table called "Employee_who_died_on_duty" - ideally you want no entries in that table (OK, so a better example would be something like "System_Crashed" or whatever) - so would you give that a plural name or what?

> Tree = bad
> Trees = Better
> Forest = Good

Again, I fail to see why. A collection (set) of trees is not necessarily a forest, but a forest is by definition a set of trees?

Paul...

-- 

plinehan__AT__yahoo__DOT__com

C++ Builder 5 SP1, Interbase 6.0.1.6 IBX 5.04