Re: Implementation of boolean types.

>> When ISO came up with this standard, what percentage of existing databases provided more than two possible values for gender? <<

The problem was that too many databases were using the local language equivalent of 'M' and 'F' and could not exchange data, nor model a corporation nor show a missing value. This code was designed for normal usage, not medical freaks.

>> I don't know how we are going to get past the underscores in attribute names vs camelCase names issue, however. I'd appreciate more consistency in naming throughout an application and camelCase is here to stay. <<

Get a copy of SQL PROGRAMMING STYLE for some of the details about readable names. For example, camelCase is worse and you can measure it with eye movement studies. The eye is attracted to an uppercase letter because it marks the start of a sentence or a noun. Then the eye has to twitch back left to the start of the word.

What makes this really bad is thart the second unit of the name is often a scale or other standardized postfix, as requred by ISO-11179 rules. When you read "fooType" and "barType" you get confused because you processed the second unit first. Effectively, your eye is saying "it's a TYPE, the last thing i read was FOO so I expect a FOO, wait! Nope! it's BAR. now I can move to the next unit of text after twitching this.". Received on Thu Jul 14 2005 - 15:56:43 CEST