TAB_ANAL_RET_TEST people! :fa_spoon: :point_down: :fist:



  • This is Ascendant, live from South Korea.

    Today's story is a tiny ERD.

    So yesterday I was called into a meeting.
    It lasted for two hours with little to no useful information.

    The plan is to apply new requirements to an existing project by creating a new SVN repository and copy/paste the old code and modifying it while using the old database tables.

    We've got a 50 pages long slide show of requirements and the deadline is 4th of March; and they intend to do the above.

    Now, I've received an ERD that contains the tables.

    TAB_WAT_OBS_IDE
    TAB_WAT_OBS_DAT
    TAB_SO_BADR_INPUT
    TAB_SO_GOSI_RIVIER

    and

    TAB_ANAL_RET
    TAB_ANAL_RET_TEST
    TAB_ANAL_LIST

    Is it a good practice to prefix tables with TAB_?
    Is it a good practice to use... random abbreviations?
    And... I know their first language isn't English but....

    ANAL_LIST


  • area_can

    Tab anal-retentiveness test. Show someone code that's indented with spaces and see how long they hold out until they convert it to tabs.



  • no and no.
    there's at least some kind of dictionary for the abbreviations?



  • No. No dictionary.



  • I've seen people do tables with something like "TAB_" because each create script was named for what it made and all in the same folder (so all the stored procedure scripts started with "SP_", views with "VW_", indexes with "IN_"). In that case it works to keep them different from each other, but the organization would be better to put the scripts in different folders (or name them slightly different from what they were making or combine indexes with the table they were on or lots of other things). Basically, yes I've seen it but the problem they are trying to fix should have been fixed at a different level.



  • This gets fun when tables are replaced with compatibility views. It also makes Joe Celko sad.


  • Notification Spam Recipient

    @locallunatic said:

    the problem they are trying to fix should have been fixed at a different level.

    This. Apparently the practice started when it was (apparently) impossible to determine the difference between a stored proc, view, and table. Somewhere down the road, some geniuses decided "Nah that's dumb, lets put the name of the application using the objects instead!", and later on something else happened.

    So now, the database is littered with things like:

    • tbl_PRODLIB_AS400_Extraction_AccountsMaster
    • vw_DOCUS_AllAccountInfo
    • do_getAccountInfo
    • DOCUS_RIN_ASSIGNMENTS

    It's... special.


  • BINNED

    We have a bunch of *ANAL* modules in one application. It's a reference to analytical bookkeeping but I still find it a stupid idea to plaster that combo over the screen when something goes wrong.


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @Ascendant said:

    And... I know their first language isn't English but....

    ANAL_LIST

    I don't think it's a language problem. IIRC Sage has some ANAL tables of its very own, and Sage is British. The ANAL is short for analysis, obviously! <sarcasm>More importantly, they managed to save an entire 3 characters, whilst keeping the entire meaning of the column. Totally worth it!</sarcasm>


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @Luhmann said:

    ANAL module

    :giggity: I hear you can buy some of those from the right kind of website... 🔦


  • BINNED

    @DoctorJones said:

    the right kind of website

    for some value of 'right'



  • @Ascendant said:

    Is it a good practice to prefix tables with TAB_?

    It means you're not using a proper IDE. If you were, you'd know it was a table because in the object browser it'd have an icon saying so and in auto-complete its name would show up in places where SQL expects table names.

    @Ascendant said:

    Is it a good practice to use... random abbreviations?

    Not unless you have a pretty good reason to.

    @Ascendant said:

    And... I know their first language isn't English but....

    Meh.



  • @Luhmann said:

    We have a bunch of ANAL modules in one application. It's a reference to analytical bookkeeping but I still find it a stupid idea to plaster that combo over the screen when something goes wrong.

    Didn't know SQL had such a short table name length limit.

    TABLE_BOOKKEEPING_ANALYTICAL_DATA


  • BINNED

    Dos filenames had. You can have only one bookkeep.exe



  • One of our Access databases exhibits the following naming convention:

    • frmSomething is a form
    • qrySomething is a query or report
    • rptSomething is a report
    • tblSomething is a table, form, or report
    • tblSomething subform is a form
    • tblSomething Query is a query or report
    • Something Query is a query
    • Something can be anything.

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