Naming Is Hard

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Naming Is Hard

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Kim Crosser SSCommitted Points: 1763 More actions · Answer 1

Re - table names that are GUIDs...

If this is a pre-configured database intended as part of a system/application "as is", then whoever did that was at least mildly insane.

However, some systems (such as one I work with) are designed to allow Customer personnel to dynamically create new complex objects within the application, and these new objects come with associated tables, indexes, etc., that are dynamically created. In this situation, creating the tables with GUIDs as names ensures that no future release of the application will possibly conflict with existing customer-created table names.

While GUID table names are definitely hard for us "meatware" to read, the software has no problem with the internal manifest that provides all the associations, and it is fairly rare that we really need to write direct SQL statements against the GUID tables.

David.Poole SSC Guru Points: 76000 More actions · Answer 2

There are still systems in common use out there with surprisingly short length naming restrictions. I seem to remember that there is something like an ANAME record for Linux systems that is limited to 15 characters. If it's not an ANAME record it is something with a similar name.

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Gary Varga SSC Guru Points: 82166 More actions · Answer 3

David.Poole (4/7/2016)
There are still systems in common use out there with surprisingly short length naming restrictions. I seem to remember that there is something like an ANAME record for Linux systems that is limited to 15 characters. If it's not an ANAME record it is something with a similar name.

Also Oracle.

Gaz

-- Stop your grinnin' and drop your linen...they're everywhere!!!

kiwood Ten Centuries Points: 1074 More actions · Answer 4

What I loved about the JD Edwards database I had peripherally deal with was the lack of enforced foreign keys. Thus, you got to guess at where the proper joins were.

But ... from a developer standpoint it often doesn't matter what the table name is. Especially if one uses an ORM, where they can easily name them in code in a meaningful manner. In fact, I did just that kind of thing for dealing with the JD Edwards database. I gave my tables friendly names, and setup relationships.