RE: Table Naming Conventions

From: Cary Millsap <cary.millsap_at_hotsos.com>
Date: Wed, 31 Jul 2002 08:25:34 -0800
Message-ID: <F001.004A776F.20020731082534@fatcity.com>

I agree wholeheartedly with your second point. In theory, there should be a table called "DISTRIBUTION" or something like that. Then,

        (Customizations) = (Everything there is) - (DISTRIBUTION)

But in the absence of such a device, a naming convention will help.

(By the way, I think the term "naming convention" is more accurate than "naming standard." The word "standard" somehow implies that a naming rule is something more than voluntary. Organizationally, it may be mandatory, but the computer doesn't care, which makes anyone's naming decision--ultimately--voluntary.)

Cary Millsap
Hotsos Enterprises, Ltd.
http://www.hotsos.com

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-----Original Message-----
Rich
Sent: Wednesday, July 31, 2002 10:09 AM
To: Multiple recipients of list ORACLE-L

Excellent point, Cary. I have seen a table with all 7 of it's index names
suffixed with "_PK". Makes the monikor a bit useless, doesn't it? I was
about to kindly chide the dev who created them, but I couldn't come up with
a sane reason why we should spend all that time renaming indexes, when an
outer join to a %_CONSTRAINTS view will tell the whole story.

I do, however, enforce a rule that says that any object we create in the ERP
app schema of our 3rd-party ERP DB be prefixed with "QT" or "QT_". This way, if we ever upgrade the app, I can very easily identify our custom tables, indexes, triggers, etc for recreation. Likewise, all the other schemas we add to this DB are prefixed as well.

Rich Jesse                           System/Database Administrator
Rich.Jesse_at_qtiworld.com              Quad/Tech International, Sussex, WI

USA
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Cary Millsap [mailto:cary.millsap_at_hotsos.com]
> Sent: Tuesday, July 30, 2002 9:03 PM
> To: Multiple recipients of list ORACLE-L
> Subject: RE: Table Naming Conventions
>
>
> I don't like such prefixes because they make it easier to lie or make
> mistakes. I've seen people try for hours to figure out why something
> doesn't make sense, only to find out that the index whose
> name has a 'U'
> in it actually wasn't created with the "UNIQUE" attribute.
>
> Names falsely cause reliance that cannot be trusted. Making reports on
> such things easier to run is, to my mind, a better idea than
> integrating
> too much information into naming standards.

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Received on Wed Jul 31 2002 - 11:25:34 CDT