Re: Naming Standards

Dale Forrey wrote: We are new to the Informix world and the Data Administrator at our shop is a little frustrated with the 18 character limit on names. Has anyone come up with a clever set of naming standards that they are willing to share with the list? For instance, do element names always or ever reference the entity to which they belong? Is there a standard set of abbreviations that you use? Are some words always abbreviated and others never abbreviated? Where did Informix come up with a limit of 18 characters in the first place? Anyway, thanks for your help. Dale: I also understand your frustration on the name length limitation. Let me see if I can answer some of your questions. Element names referencing the entities they belong to is really a matter of preference. Some people feel this is important and use it as a loose form of documentation. However data normalization for purists says this should not happen. The reasons are attributes are defined independent of entities, they are the nouns (person, place or thing) about which you want to store data. Only through the normalization process do they become associated with a entity. Additionally this technique supports consistant naming standards and domain groupings. As for standard abbreviations that is a matter of preference, some like to remove the vowels from works, but here are of my standards for common attribute names number = nbr identification = id sequence = seq date = dt authorization = auth count = cnt digits = dgt member = mbr history = hist type = typ location = loc list = lst code = cd group = grp term = trm update = upd I think you get the picture, good luck David Henseler