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Dear Jim,
"When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said, "it means just what
I choose it to mean, neither more nor less."
"The question is", said Alice "whether you can make
words mean so many different things.
- Lewis Carroll Through the Looking glass
In the passage above Humpty Dumpty was using words
haphazardly. As a result Alice was confused by what he was
trying to say. If Humpty had followed the convention of using
standard terms in standard ways, it would have been much easier
for Alice to understand him. In a similar way, if you use a
naming convention in your database projects, you'll work more
efficiently.
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Naming Conventions |
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If you use a naming convention then it's much easier for
you to easily identify objects and their purposes in
your database applications. Consider the following 3 SQL
statements:
Select * from students
Select * from tblStudents
Select * from qryStudents
With the first statement you have to guess where the
data is coming from - is it a table or a query? The
second and third statements make clear the source,
especially if you've adopted and followed a naming
convention. It's not hard to remember that tbl stands
for a table and qry stands for a query.
Bring this a step further and consider a form that
has as its data source, one of the three statements. If
there's a problem with the data you'll know exactly
where to look for tblStudents or qryStudents, with plain
students you'll have to start searching.
Although the above example is trivial, consider a
complex database with hundreds of tables, queries,
forms, and reports. A naming convention will help you
identify and find what you're looking for much faster.
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Suggested Naming Convention |
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Use prefixes for your naming convention
One of the first decisions for your naming convention
is whether to use prefixes or suffixes. Prefixes are the
way to go. By using prefixes for your naming convention,
similar objects will group together when you sort them,
making it easier to see all the objects of a certain
type together.
Once you've decided on prefixes or suffixes you can
"grow your own" convention or use one created by someone
else.
The most widely used naming convention in Access is
by Leszynski. You can find a copy of it by googling
"Access Naming Convention". I use a modified version
which you can get at my website below.
Custom Software Naming Convention »
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A Couple of Dos and Don'ts |
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Do Use mixed case notation
tblStudents is easy to read, capitalizing the intial t,
or going with all upper or lower case makes it much
tougher to figure out.
Don't use spaces
As I've mentioned in earlier articles, spaces will cause
you problems in the long run. The mixed case notation I
recommend will make your objects understandable.
Some folks like to use underscores for spaces. I'm
not a fan of this approach since it becomes tempting to
use the title of an object to be descriptive rather than
identifying.
Don't use punctuation
Avoid it like the plague. Punctuation in your object
names will get you into trouble. A dash may be
misinterpreted to be a minus, a comma will cause trouble
if you need to parse data. An apostrophe can easily
cause a quoted string to break at an inappropriate
point. Although Access may allow you to do to these
things, if you even need to upsize to another database
such as SQL Server, your use of a standard naming
convention will make it an easier road to travel.
The one exception to this rule is temporary objects
which I discuss in this month's tip.
For the Coders out there -- In your modules, prefix
all variables with the appropriate designator, e.g., str
for string, int for integer. This will make debugging
much easier and will jog your memory for the type of
variable you need as you reference the object.
Bottom Line: Settle on a Naming Convention and use it
religiously.
Custom Software Naming Convention »
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Trap of the Month |
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Avoid naming objects (including fields) something that
has meaning within Access. For instance, don't name a
date field "Date" The trap here is that in certain
circumstances Access may interpret your field as a
request to return the current date. One good way to
determine if a word has meaning to Access is to do a
search on it. If you come up with a hit, you'll want to
change to something else.
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Tip of the Month |
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For temporary objects use an underscore "_" as the
initial character. If you use this convention you'll get
two big benefits:
1. When you sort objects these items will float to
the top of your list so you'll be able to see and group
them easily.
2. Any time you see a table, query, form etc, that
starts with an underscore you can feel comfortable
deleting it because you know that it's a temporary
object. |
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