[AccessD] Names or numbers?

Roz,

Personally, I think your contractor has a 'lot of experience' working
without good business judgment.  Any database is, after all, just a business
tool.  Maintenance on this system could be very expensive.

I take the other direction and provide all my table fields, form controls,
variables, recordsets, etc., with full names.  An example would be:

FinanceDefine		(field - text)
FinanceDefineValue	(field - integer)
FinanceDefineDate		(field - Date)

lblFinanceDefine		(label)
cboFinanceDefine		(combobox)
txtFinanceDefineValue	(textbox)
txtFinanceDefineDate   	(textbox)

In this particular case, there are similar fields for 6 other departmental
roles equivalent to Finance.  Using a consistent naming convention lets me
set up one procedure Function to handle all 7 roles for checking values or
formatting.  

Another strong value for me is that because the code is directly readable,
the amount of commenting I need to do is greatly reduced.  It takes time to
type in the full names, but if I used 'random' names, then with each code
change I would also need to retype the comments.  

I believe that I put in a little extra work up front, with a payback later
on of being able to quickly read the code to understand what is happening.

Are you really limited to 8 characters for field names?  If so, what is the
BE you are using?

Dan Waters

-----Original Message-----
From: accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com
[mailto:accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com] On Behalf Of Roz Clarke
Sent: Wednesday, August 04, 2004 7:51 AM
To: AccessD (AccessD at databaseadvisors.com)
Subject: [AccessD] Names or numbers?

Dear all

I am currently engaged in an argument with a contractor over the naming of
details in our database.

His argument is that since the actual names of the details will never be
exposed to the ordinary user, we should just give them numbers; X0000001,
X0000002 and so forth. X denotes the current phase of development, another
whacky idea of his. The 'friendly' names are held in a lookup table.

Personally, since I have to work with these details on a daily basis, I
would like the code to be a combination of categorisation, e.g. using the
1st two characters to describe the position / type of the detail, say XC for
claimant details and XD for defendant details and XA for admin details,
whilst using the other (up to 6) characters to describe the detail, say
XCDOB for claimant's date of birth.

The contractor's contention is that people will make up arbitrary &
meaningless character codes which will be confusing, whereas the numbered
details will be in a sensible sequence.

a) he is not proposing to leave any gaps in the sequence for later insertion
of related details
b) I don't see how a number is going to be less confusing than an alpha code
c) we can still use the lookup table with the alpha codes if needed

Has anyone got any thoughts on naming conventions? Any experience of fully
numeric naming systems that they can share? I have the authority to overrule
him but this is a really big project so I want to get it right, and he is
(theoretically) a lot more experienced than I am. He just hasn't come up
with any convincing arguments.

TIA

Roz