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RE: Enlightenment via avoiding the T-word

• From: "Bullard, Claude L (Len)" <clbullar@i...>
• To: Ralph Hilken <ralph.hilken@a...>,"'xml-dev@l...'" <xml-dev@l...>
• Date: Wed, 29 Aug 2001 09:01:20 -0500

>The problem of naming seems to transcend XML applications.

Naming an elephant is easy.  Getting Adam and Eve to use 
the same name is a little harder.  Getting 
Cain or Abel to keep using the name Mom and 
Dad agreed on eventually is harder.  Finally, 
someone sits down an enumerates the Edenic names but 
can't agree with the next scribe what to name 
the afterEdenic names.  And so it goes through the generations 
until Eden becomes Babel and some despot thinks he 
needs a tower to ask God what the name of the names is 
and everyone starts to work on it.

Problem is, the elephant thinks his name is Ziggy.

Appending type to columns is one way to make 
scripts easier to write and debug although given IDE 
automatic type checking, not as useful as 
it once was.

Len 
http://www.mp3.com/LenBullard

Ekam sat.h, Vipraah bahudhaa vadanti.
Daamyata. Datta. Dayadhvam.h


-----Original Message-----
From: Ralph Hilken [mailto:ralph.hilken@a...]

FWIW, when I use ERwin (an expensive database modeling tool favored by
Fortune 500 firms) out of the box to design tables, it will prompt me
whenever I add a column to a table that has the exact same column name
already used in another table.  I thought this was a curiosity, as I know
what table the column belongs to, so I ignored that message and kept on
trudging.  

Now I realize that maybe there are folks out there that _do care_ that
columns in database tables must maintain unique names.  In that case having
a unique column name would be sufficient enough for identifying things
uniquely in such a system across tables.  BTW, ERwin would be more than
happy to generate a unique column name if one is short on imagination at the
moment.

There are also many folks who enjoy prepending a "T_" in front of database
table names, in case you were wondering that the name you just encountered
is a table name.  I consider myself happy that I never ran into a database
that prepended all of its column names with a "C_".  I have seen data t**ing
make their way into column names.

The problem of naming seems to transcend XML applications.

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