RE: Standard of Column Names
To me, this is entirely a matter of personal choice - and the important thing is to pick a standard and stick to it. :) I usually end up with a table called 'People' for arguments sake, which will have an abstract PK (auto increment int) called PeopleID (I always use the table name). I also capitalize each word (and all abbreviations), which is a habit from MSSQL programming - MySQL is case sensitive, which is worth remembering. I use underscores to indicate that a table is a 'glue' table - e.g. If each row in People can correspond to multiple rows in the table Jobs, and vice versa, I would create People_Jobs to describe the relationship between the two. There are a number of different methods that have been published, including 'Norwegian', I believe - and a bit of googling should turn up some info on these. :) Cheers, Matt -Original Message- From: Ronan Lucio [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: 27 April 2004 15:46 To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Standard of Column Names Hello, I´m doing the planing for an application that will use MySQL as database. So, I´d like to know your opinions about the standard for the column names. Supposing that I should create a table named car. Is it better to have either the column names (cod, name, description) or (car_cod, car_name, car_description)? Thanks, Ronan -- MySQL General Mailing List For list archives: http://lists.mysql.com/mysql To unsubscribe:http://lists.mysql.com/[EMAIL PROTECTED] -- MySQL General Mailing List For list archives: http://lists.mysql.com/mysql To unsubscribe:http://lists.mysql.com/[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Standard of Column Names
Ronan Lucio wrote: Hello, I´m doing the planing for an application that will use MySQL as database. So, I´d like to know your opinions about the standard for the column names. Supposing that I should create a table named car. Is it better to have either the column names (cod, name, description) or (car_cod, car_name, car_description)? Hello. IMHO: 1) Table name as prefix is unnecessary for me. It's norwegian notation which I hate. 2) Also I recomend look into ANSI SQL standard for reserved keywords. I've got experience of porting DB from MySQL(allow some keywords) to another DB, it's pain. Good luck. Ruslan. Thanks, Ronan -- MySQL General Mailing List For list archives: http://lists.mysql.com/mysql To unsubscribe:http://lists.mysql.com/[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Standard of Column Names
Ruslan, IMHO: 1) Table name as prefix is unnecessary for me. It's norwegian notation which I hate. 2) Also I recomend look into ANSI SQL standard for reserved keywords. I've got experience of porting DB from MySQL(allow some keywords) to another DB, it's pain. Thank you your answer. Do you know where can I find a documentation about ANSI SQL Standards and what is the ANSI SQL standard implemented by MySQL? I ask it because I´ll prefer to work with column types that are in the ANSI SQL Stantard like INTEGER instead of MEDIUMINT. Thanks, Ronan -- MySQL General Mailing List For list archives: http://lists.mysql.com/mysql To unsubscribe:http://lists.mysql.com/[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Standard of Column Names
Harald, I don't see the necessity of the latter naming scheme since SELECT cod, name, description FROM car can also be written as SELECT car.cod, car.name, car.description FROM car Do you know how it would be about portability? Thanks, Ronan -- MySQL General Mailing List For list archives: http://lists.mysql.com/mysql To unsubscribe:http://lists.mysql.com/[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Standard of Column Names
Harald Fuchs wrote: In article [EMAIL PROTECTED], Ronan Lucio [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Hello, I´m doing the planing for an application that will use MySQL as database. So, I´d like to know your opinions about the standard for the column names. Supposing that I should create a table named car. Is it better to have either the column names (cod, name, description) or (car_cod, car_name, car_description)? I don't see the necessity of the latter naming scheme since SELECT cod, name, description FROM car can also be written as SELECT car.cod, car.name, car.description FROM car Right. In general, adding the table name to the column names just results in more typing, and the manual http://dev.mysql.com/doc/mysql/en/Tips.html explicitly recommends keeping column names short and simple: Columns with identical information in different tables should be declared to have identical data types. Before Version 3.23, you got slow joins otherwise. Try to keep the names simple. For example, in a table named customer, use a column name of name instead of customer_name. To make your names portable to other SQL servers, you should keep them shorter than 18 characters. On the other hand, there was a poster recently who had a lot of tables with identical column names who was looking for a way to get the table name included in the column name header in mysql output. As he wanted an automatic solution, rather than typing in all the aliases by hand, he might have benefited from this sort of table_col naming scheme. Michael -- MySQL General Mailing List For list archives: http://lists.mysql.com/mysql To unsubscribe:http://lists.mysql.com/[EMAIL PROTECTED]
