Worst Practice - Spaces in Object Names

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Worst Practice - Spaces in Object Names

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Andy Warren

Posted Sunday, September 28, 2003 12:00 AM

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Comments posted to this topic are about the content posted at http://www.sqlservercentral.com/columnists/awarren/worstpracticespacesinobjectnames.asp>http://www.sqlservercentral.com/columnists/awarren/worstpracticespacesinobjectnames.asp

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Post #16742

scaleovenstove

Posted Tuesday, September 30, 2003 7:31 PM

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also, not only table naming conventions, but field naming conventions. it is really tough to write queries that join two tables where they both have fields named "id" to join on. It gets even worse when you add more fields, joins, etc. True, you can alias columns and tables (a.id = b.id), but that is a pain and is avoidable by naming the fields the "right" way!

Post #81262

philcart

Posted Tuesday, September 30, 2003 9:00 PM

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add to this, avoiding the use of non-alphanumeric characters, wildcards, etc...
eg: tblName%

Arrrgghh!!!!

Hope this helps
Phill Carter
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Hope this helps
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Post #81263

David.Poole

Posted Wednesday, October 01, 2003 1:46 AM

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I agree with this 100%

Don't use spaces in table names
Stick to alphanumerics, (preferably without the numerics unless you absolutely must)
Don't use reserved words for tables i.e have a table called "Order" or "Exists"!

I think a "best practices" option should be added to YUKON so default naming conventions can be enforced. For example, pattern match object names.

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Post #81264

steveshellard

Posted Wednesday, October 01, 2003 2:42 AM

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I guess people do it for readability, but I've always used the '_' (underscore) if I've needed to put a gap between words in a table name.

eg. New_Table_Name

Post #81265

Jonr

Posted Wednesday, October 01, 2003 3:22 AM

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Totally agree - bad enough that data types can't be standardised across databases/programming languages, let alone adding nonsense like spaces and underscores to object names. Added to which, doesn't it contravene ANSI standard SQL, which would make it more difficult to port?

Jon Reade

Edited by - jonreade on 10/01/2003 03:52:31 AM

Jon

Post #81266

Andy Warren

Posted Wednesday, October 01, 2003 4:46 AM

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I'm going to a follow up to hit on the object naming thing a little harder - you guys are right, spaces arent the only bad thing. Just particularly objectionalble to me!

Andy
http://www.sqlservercentral.com/columnists/awarren/

Andy
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Post #81267

Lara Rubbelke

Posted Wednesday, October 01, 2003 6:43 AM

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Thank you! I have been fighting this battle for years! Nothing is as frustrating as writing out the query, or grabbing columns from the object browser, hitting execute and getting an error because I need brackets around some object. Egad! Just don't do it! Embrace the non-spaced object naming convention!

There are indeed many "worst practices" to avoid, but this is so easy to avoid.

Post #81268

Robert W Marda

Posted Wednesday, October 01, 2003 12:15 PM

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I see no reason to use spaces for object names or column names. To me TableName is just as easy to read as Table Name and then I don't have to see those brackets which just cluter up the screen.

Robert W. Marda
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Post #81269

John Langston

Posted Wednesday, October 01, 2003 12:54 PM

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I blame the practice on Access database users. Access allows this practice and then if the Access database has to be moved to SQL Server, those tasked with the move get bitten.

Post #81270

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