|
Home > Archive > MS SQL Data Warehousing > October 2006 > Naming Conventions in Data Warehouse
You are viewing an archived Text-only version of the thread.
To view this thread in it's original format and/or if you want to reply to
this thread please [click here]
| Author |
Naming Conventions in Data Warehouse
|
|
| Corvette1964 2006-10-25, 6:00 am |
| We're at the beginning of expanding our reporting system into a
datawarehouse. I'm conscious that column names need to be user friendly :
easy to understand and easy to find.
For example to help users find columns alphabetically I could prefix all
Date columns with "Date_" and Revenue with "Rev_". This makes it easy for a
report comparing say Date_Invoice to Date_Paid.
But what if user wants to report on Invoice information, it would be easier
then to have a convention "Invoice_" eg Invoice_Date, Invoice_Revenue,
Invoice_Number.
Would like to get it "right" from the beginning. I wonder if there are any
conventions out there in the BI community?
| |
| susiedba@hotmail.com 2006-10-25, 6:00 am |
| yeah I would reccomend NOT making it so verbose.. and SURE as hell not
including an underscore character
how about just make it a single character, D = Date, V = Varchar, N =
NVarchar, T = Text, I = Integer
one of your major design goals should be to :
NOT RENAME FIELDS WHEN YOU LOOSEN YOUR TINYINT COLUMN TO A SMALLINT
Corvette1964 wrote:
> We're at the beginning of expanding our reporting system into a
> datawarehouse. I'm conscious that column names need to be user friendly :
> easy to understand and easy to find.
> For example to help users find columns alphabetically I could prefix all
> Date columns with "Date_" and Revenue with "Rev_". This makes it easy for a
> report comparing say Date_Invoice to Date_Paid.
> But what if user wants to report on Invoice information, it would be easier
> then to have a convention "Invoice_" eg Invoice_Date, Invoice_Revenue,
> Invoice_Number.
> Would like to get it "right" from the beginning. I wonder if there are any
> conventions out there in the BI community?
| |
| michanne 2006-10-25, 6:01 am |
|
If the information can be gotten with >minimal< effort why repeat it in the
name? For example - if you are consistently using a datetime datatype.
Sometimes you have to use a varchar half the time and then it might make
sense to put it in the name. (Hopefully that isn't the case.) I have found it
useful to prefix an aggregate column with 'cnt','sum', 'avg', etc. My only
real "rule of thumb" is that I eliminate as much as possible any mistake
about where the data came from even if it is "their fault" for not
understanding the source. I don't worry too much about sorting columns
because of things like object views and sp_help. (I am assuming you are
talking about db users not app users.)
"Corvette1964" wrote:
> We're at the beginning of expanding our reporting system into a
> datawarehouse. I'm conscious that column names need to be user friendly :
> easy to understand and easy to find.
> For example to help users find columns alphabetically I could prefix all
> Date columns with "Date_" and Revenue with "Rev_". This makes it easy for a
> report comparing say Date_Invoice to Date_Paid.
> But what if user wants to report on Invoice information, it would be easier
> then to have a convention "Invoice_" eg Invoice_Date, Invoice_Revenue,
> Invoice_Number.
> Would like to get it "right" from the beginning. I wonder if there are any
> conventions out there in the BI community?
|
|
|
|
|