Re: Naming Standards

In article <3157171A.525A_at_msmail.state.ky.us>, Gary Rue <grue%fairoaks_at_msmail.state.ky.us> wrote:
>I am developing database naming standards for Oracle and Sybase.
>It would be nice to develop a global client/server standard,
>regardless of the database engine. Our mainframe standards don't
>exactly transcend neatly into the c/s world.

Standards change from installation to installation.

In the course of many application assignments I have found that the following guidelines work best for portability and maintainability.

1. Use lowercase letters and underscores. Not all languages are case sensitive, and the name update_date will be more portable than UpdateDate.
2. Whenever possible, use full words. This is more typing the first time, but any programmer worth his/her salt can cut and paste. Anyone who has referred time, and time again, to a list of cryptic abbreviations will appreciate the wisdom of this. Also, it limits the need for end-user translations. At a glance you can tell what is in a field called service_representative_name. Can the same be said about srv_rep_nm (or is it serv_rep_nam?)
3. If you must use abbreviations, be consistent in your abbreviation schema. One client had abbreviated "date" as "dt", "code as "cde", and "type" as "type". It was argued that a dictionary was available, but this type of inconsistency makes its usage more frequent than should be necessary.

I would have preferred "date", "code" and "type". But, an alternate plan could have been "dat", "cod" and "typ" or "dt", "cd" and "tp" if the field length was critical.

4) No matter what convention you use, be prepared for resistance. This is especially true in shops where long-used mainframe database naming conventions are in place. The biggest reason for not using existing conventions, is when people must look up field "AAC84XY9" in a dictionary to tell you what it contains.

The debate over naming conventions tends to take on the same religious fervor as operating system selection, windowing system selection, or package selection for GUI-based systems.

Good luck

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