On Tue, Aug 25, 2015 at 6:27 PM, Gavin Flower <gavinflo...@archidevsys.co.nz > wrote:
> On 26/08/15 04:33, Marc Munro wrote: > >> On Sat, 2015-08-22 at 15:15 +0000, Melvin Davidson wrote: >> >> I've been searching for a "PostgreSQL Developer Best Practices" with not >>> much luck, >>> so I've started my own. At the risk of stirring up a storm of >>> controversy, >>> I would appreciate additional suggestions and feedback. >>> >>> You might add: Create all relation names as plurals. >> >> Or, if your site uses predominantly singular names, make that the >> standard. Consistency within the site is more important than any >> dogmatic belief about whether singular or plural forms is better. If >> you don't put it in the standard, someone will eventually create tables >> with names that don't gel with everything else. >> >> __ >> Marc >> >> >> >> >> >> Actually I would suggest standardising on singular names, not JUST > because that this the standard I prefer! :-) > > But (also) because: > > 1. Singular words tend to be shorter > > 2. plurals are more ambiguous wrt spelling > > 3. there other good reasons, that I've forgotten for now :-( > (but I remember having them!!!) > > Because my first college IS professor taught it this way...I do like these other reasons though. The fact that a table can have multiple rows is pretty much a given - and I wouldn't suggest plural adherents name any singleton tables using the singular form - so no information is lost. Having since learned OO the class of something is labelled in the singular form and in many ways a relation definition is equivalent to a class definition. David J.
