Case style of tables and field (Naming Conventions)

naming convention

What is best practice for naming dbs, tables (collections) and fields among DBMSs?

I mean casing style, for example AaaBaa,aaa-bbb, aaa_bbb, AAA-BBB, aaaBbb, …

I think if one exists it should be applicable to all DBMSs (MySQL, MongoDB, Oracle, …), shouldn't it?

Currently I thing following is most appropriate:

Columns/Fields/Tables/Collections/Databases: aaaBbbCcc.

Could distinct case style for these object be useful at all?

Best Answer

It all boils down to personal preference and consistency within your team (or just yourself). Nothing worse than seeing different styles mixed.

As for SQL Server, be mindful of sp_yourProcName, as "sp_" prefix for a stored procedure can do funny things (read more about this from Aaron Bertrand).

Consistency is king. Make your choice and stick with it.

Related Solutions

Naming Tables and Views – Standard Naming Conventions to Follow

OK, first NEVER put tbl in front of a table's name. It's a table, we already now that. That's called Hungarian Notation, and people stopped doing that 5+ years ago.

Just call the object based on what it is. If a table holds employee data call it "Employee". If it holds information about computers call it "Computer". If it maps computers to employees call it "EmployeeComputer" or "ComputerEmployee" (personally I like "EmployeeComputer" better).

There's no real right naming convention to use (other than to not use Hungarian Notation). As long as the object names make sense that it what is important.

Column name naming conventions and best practices

This has been asked before on SO.

Where you have common and very ambiguous names, then prefix with table name. That is, anything you're liable to have to alias in almost every query.

So for an Employee table I'd have

EmployeeID
EmployeeName
Comment
Salary
StartDate
EndDate
InsertedDateTime
...

And Wikipedia actually says:

The USING construct is more than mere syntactic sugar, however, since the result set differs from the result set of the version with the explicit predicate. Specifically, any columns mentioned in the USING list will appear only once, with an unqualified name, rather than once for each table in the join.

That is one less column. You'd never use SELECT * anyway so the point is moot...

Best Answer

Related Solutions

Naming Tables and Views – Standard Naming Conventions to Follow

Column name naming conventions and best practices

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