IDKeyword or KeywordID?

• g1696412

  SSC Enthusiast

  Points: 144

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  July 2, 2015 at 6:53 am

  #398684

  Hello,

  when dealing with building BI solution, respectively database structures for it, should Key elements (=used for joining tables) be named as KeywordID or IDKeyword? I used to use IDKeyword, but as I check other random sources, everywhere it's in format KeywordID. What is the best practice in such trivial thing?

  Thanks for your opinions.

  Kind regards,

  g

• HanShi

  SSC-Dedicated

  Points: 33507

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  July 2, 2015 at 6:56 am

  #1809855

  There is no official naming convention. Just choose one and stick with it. The most important thing is to be consequent and use the same notation overywhere.

  ** Don't mistake the ‘stupidity of the crowd’ for the ‘wisdom of the group’! **

• Martin Schoombee

  SSCoach

  Points: 19128

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  July 2, 2015 at 12:18 pm

  #1810027

  g1696412 (7/2/2015)

  ---

  Hello,

  when dealing with building BI solution, respectively database structures for it, should Key elements (=used for joining tables) be named as KeywordID or IDKeyword? I used to use IDKeyword, but as I check other random sources, everywhere it's in format KeywordID. What is the best practice in such trivial thing?

  Thanks for your opinions.

  Kind regards,

  g

  The only "best practice" when it comes to naming conventions is consistency.

  I personally prefer to use an underscore naming convention, i.e. "Product_Category" because it reads easy (my opinion) and SSAS removes the underscores by default making it less of an effort to rename cube attributes.

  I also prefer to use the "_Key" suffix for surrogate keys in dimensions/facts. In the past I have found many operational systems with the "...ID" convention to name unique identifiers, and for me the "_Key" convention allows me to potentially include attributes with "ID" as part of the name and without creating confusion.