Database table naming conventions

Naming things well is an important part of writing maintainable software, and renaming things once their names have become established in a code basecan be tedious work. This is true as well for the names of an application database schema, where a schema change usually requires a database migration script. That’s why you should take some time beforehand to set up a naming convention.

Many applications use object-relational mappers (ORM), which have a default naming convention to map class and property names to table and column names. But if you’re not using an ORM, you should set up conventions as well. Here are some tips:

• Be consistent. For example, choose either only plural or singular for table names, e.g. “books” or “book”, and stick to it. Many sources recommend singular for table names.
• On abbreviations: Some database systems like Oracle have a character limit for names. The limit for Oracle database table names is 30 characters, which means abbreviations are almost inevitable. If you introduce abbreviations be consistent and document them in a glossary, for example in the project Wiki.
• Separate word boundaries with underscores and form a hierarchy like “namespace_entity_subentity”, e.g. “blog_post_author”. This way you can sort the tables by name and have them grouped by topic.
• Avoid unnecessary type markers. A table is still a table if you don’t prefix it with “tbl_”, and adding a “_s” postfix to a column of type string doesn’t really add useful information that couldn’t be seen in the schema browser of any database tool. This is similar to Hungarian notation , which has fallen out of use in today’s software development. If you still want to mark special database objects, for example materialised views, then you should prefer a postfix, e.g. “_mv”, over a prefix, because a prefix would mess up the lexicographic hierarchy established by the previous tip.

And the final advice: Document your conventions so that other team members are aware of them and make them mandatory.