Re: Naming Conventions?

On Apr 23, 3:05 pm, Karen Hill <karen_hil..._at_yahoo.com> wrote:
> What do you believe is the best naming convention for tables, columns,
> schemas and why?

Karen:

As for naming tables, I'd say their name should correspond to the entity they implement/describe, subject of course to your target RDBMS's object-name-length restrictions. Simple as that.

For column names, I've generally followed the PRIME WORD - MODIFIER - CLASS WORD convention, e.g., LOAN_ORIGINATION_DATE. In addition to a predefined (but expandable) list of class words, most such naming standards also include a predefined (but again able to be added-to) list of approved acronyms, and the injunction that no token of less than, say, four characters be abbreviated.

For more see:

http://tinyurl.com/3bl3v7 and http://tinyurl.com/2ook5y

The latter, though dated, has a good starting list of class words on pdf-page 95.

In the interest of "equal time," please note that the P-C-M convention has its detractors, e.g., http://www.tdan.com/i004fe06.htm

As to schema names, those usually correspond to user/owner names, or roles if shared. Not much you can do there. The big semantic payoff is in standardizing entity and attribute names and defintions.

--Jeff Received on Wed Apr 25 2007 - 02:23:35 CEST