Table Names in FileMaker
Friday 9th January, 2015
In a previous post, I talked about how I like my fields to be named. I even set out an outrageous list of demands, that any convention I have to work will need to meet. Fighting talk indeed.
So, Today we have the naming of tables.
In case you can’t be bothered looking, here’s the list of my demands for a field naming convention:
- it is a convention(!),
- it’s consistent,
- it’s concise,
- it’s comprehensible (easily understood), and
- it’s computable (programmatically efficient),
There was also something about Hungarian, but the sort of problems I find with other people’s solutions are not that sort of problem.
If you think that sounds a bit too much like a straight jacket, take a peek at the ISO 11179–5: Naming and identification principles specification, or even StackOverflow. What mine list lacks in depth, it makes up for in brevity: Score 1 for me.
For tables, I feel the need to add 1 more demand, chiefly that the table name is a singular noun that is easily pluralised.
In case it’s helpful, I’ve collected a list of singular nouns worth considering for use in a database solution.