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I've been looking for Database naming conventions and i haven't been able to find any official conventions from the Major companies.

Every other question on SO and many other IT Forums are answered with personal experience from the community, but this always lead to subjective discussions. (I know this very question may be considered subjective or argumentative, but i was hoping that someone out there knows where to find this document or the reason why it doesn't exist.)

Is there any place where i can find an official naming conventions document?
Is there a reason for this not existing?

jhurtado
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  • I think the discussion is subjective, because it is a subjective topic. If you have a DB with 10 tables, the "appropriate" naming for objects is different than for one with 200 tables. I think DB companies (or "Major Companies" as you call 'em) do not try to dictate this because it is not a technical constraint, and they do not care what you name your tables, as long as it works for you adn you use names syntactically valid (ie, do not start the name with a number, etc) – Gabriel Magana Jan 27 '11 at 17:11
  • There are generally not official naming conventions for a given technology; only within an organization or project using that technology. *Conventions*, not *rules*. – Jay Jan 27 '11 at 17:12
  • What i meant is, take a look at Java, as long as your methods names are syntactically valid, it doesn't matter if you want to name'em all caps, yet we have naming conventions that are known and used by developers around the globe for a program with 3 methods and a program with 5000 methods as well. why it doesn't seem to have the same importance in Databases? – jhurtado Jan 27 '11 at 17:18
  • Are you talking about domain specific names of entities, or style guidelines (as in writing Java)? – Larry Lustig Jan 28 '11 at 04:17
  • The latter, like capitalization, PK naming, Trigger naming, and so on... i've found a lot of "standards" but my question is why isn't there an Oracle/MS enforced standard or style guidelines. – jhurtado Jan 28 '11 at 04:41

3 Answers3

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Are you looking for guidelines from the software vendors? Microsoft for example:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd193246.aspx

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms229002.aspx

More generally, take a look at ISO standard 11179 for some very good guidance on naming.

nvogel
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  • That's kinda what im talking about, but i've been able to found general accepted conventions for every programming language, but not for database objects. Thanks for the tip on 11179 :) – jhurtado Jan 27 '11 at 21:54
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    +1 for the reference to ISO 11179, which beat me by an hour. But I had to cook dinner. – Mike Sherrill 'Cat Recall' Jan 27 '11 at 22:53
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Old Joke: There are so many standards you are bound to find one you like.

Ken Downs
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Sure there are. It depends on the application domain as well as the company that makes the DB schema, just like for every programming language out there.

Here is one that I've had to look at recently: http://www.sdsfie.org/

San Jacinto
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