fk_silly_FieldNaming_Conventions

[AHunter3]

Can I start new threads in this forum? ::looks around:: I guess someone will move it if it's in the wrong place. Isn't really pertinent to any particular version etc and it seems like it would fit in here except for me not being Harry Glos...

 

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OK, what I want to know: Is there some widely-distributed Guide to Using FileMaker Pro or Database Design Made Simple or some such that advises folks to name their fields with prefixes such as "fk_" and "var_" and so forth? I have now come across not just this general practice but some very specific recurrent prefixes, enough to leave me wondering how so many developers could have adopted such a horrid naming convention unless there were some recognized authority who had conned them all into thinking "this is how you do it" -- ??

[Ted S]

Personally I don't name fields with cryptic prefixes. I simply name them what they are except I use and underscore instead of a space. For example:

 

First_Name

Last_Name

Title

Phone

Fax

Postal_Code

User_ID

Person_No

 

Usually it is pretty obvious which is the primary key and which ones are the foreign keys.

 

I'm using the underscore between words because I think it *may* ward off future trouble when integrating with non-Filemaker databases.

 

For me the trouble with the cryptic names is that they are exposed to regular users. If a user does a simple export to Excel he gets a column heading something like kft_Phone. Now this is understandable to me but tends to confuse the everyday users and quite frankly, looks kinda bush-league. I'm really designing for them so if given a choice, I'll make it more difficult on myself than on my users.

 

In a perfect world I suppose FMI would go the route of many higher-end database systems and provide the means for assigning field aliases. This would not be a high priority for me.

[HBMarlowe]

OK, what I want to know: Is there some widely-distributed Guide to Using FileMaker Pro or Database Design Made Simple or some such that advises folks to name their fields with prefixes such as "fk_" and "var_" and so forth?

 

Hi Allan.

 

My first introduction to FM was through the book Using FileMaker 8 by Scott Love, Steve Lane, and Bob Bowers of Soliant Consulting. The authors advocate adopting naming conventions and mention the possibility of using something along the lines of __kp_ID for a primary key and _kf_TableId for foreign keys. That may be the source.

 

The authors do make the point that most any naming convention will work, so long as you adhere to it.

 

For myself, having no contrary guidance, I began to follow that advice. I believe it's served me well. I like the way all keys (and all "housekeeping" fields) stay at the top of an alphabetical list.

 

I have seen others preface all such field names with one or two z's for the opposite effect.

[harryglos]

Hey Boy's,

 

 

 

For my money it’s a waste of time, resource and brain power and when all is said and done its just stuff, that does nothing but confuse!smiley-surprised

Hells Bells man are we unable to look and see “Hey that’s a calc field and oh that’s a summary field". You really need some kind of wiz-bang naming convention to figure it out. FileMaker doesn’t make a secret of it and is why it says “Type” right where you can see it. You can even go up to "View By: Field Type" to give you better ease of viewing if that blows your skirt up.smiley_cool

 

So if you want a bunch of FK_s and Dumb_Me’s go ahead and have a good time. Just know it messes up a good sort order and does not necessarily put fields in the right place to ease readership. As a matter of fact it can be darn right confusing where confusion is not a good thing.smiley-undecided If you have 20 fields do whatever you want and forget about the whole thing. But if you have 40+ do it right the first time and that's shown below.

I know a lot of people "use_this_style". And that’s fine if you have a line faddish, but what about the good old tried and true "UseThisStyle". It’s quick, easy, specific and always the right way to do it.smiley-wink Why you ask? Because that’s how I do it so it has to be right.smiley-laughing

 

Oh one other thought. Don't be afraid to think way of of the box by doing stuff like NameFirst, NameLast and NameMiddle. It keeps your related fields together in sort order which FirstName, LastName and MiddleName will not do. Just think through the process and stick with it regardless of what some stark raving lunatic will advise you with some cock-ah-mayme-naming-convention.smiley-tongue-out

 

Man I've got to stop beating around the bush and come right out and say whats really on my mind...smiley-laughing

 

 

Just my thoughts…

Harry

[AHunter3]

I know a lot of people "use_this_style". And that’s fine if you have a line faddish, but what about the good old tried and true "UseThisStyle". It’s quick, easy, specific and always the right way to do it.smiley-wink Why you ask? Because that’s how I do it so it has to be right.smiley-laughing

 

You, sir, are a man of eminent wisdom and impeccably good taste.

 

If I see an underscore slinking around within 6 minles of my solution I will take up my axe and I will kill it

[Maarten Witberg]

pronoun_I verb_do boolean_not verb_understand adverb_what quantifier_all

article_the noun_fuss verb_is whatchamacallthis_about

[HBMarlowe]

AndICatchMyselfTypingLikeThisAllTheTimeNowadaysButAtLeastItIsEasyToRead

[harryglos]

Hi guys,

Well I’m happy you all located the wall, found the switch and turned on the light. You are all sharp and vociferous mondookers.So Cool!

Allen, I wanted to apologize to you for moving your thread from the World, here to the design forum. I did it, not because you can’t post to the World, because you are sertenly welcome to do so. I just felt this would be a better forum and it would get broader readership. Ender and Kjoe talk about this kind of crazy stuff all the time, like “lets in vision a silken flower grasshopper.smiley-laughing

Don’t you hate that stuff…smiley-wink

Harry

[Ender]

Greetings guys,

 

I see it's been a while since we've talked about naming conventions. Some of you seemed to have forgotten what the point is. smiley-surprised

 

I would encourage you to read the FileMaker Development Conventions document, located here:

 

http://www.filemaker.com/products/upgrade/techbriefs.html

 

It is a set of guidelines about naming conventions that weighs some naming convention choices and explains why one would want to use naming conventions.

 

I've been using CoreSolutions naming conventions for field names for about 5 years, and I think it has helped. It makes it easier to quickly locate key fields or globals from dialogs other than the Field Definition dialog, and to understand what kind of key fields or globals they are.

[LingoJango]

I know a lot of people "use_this_style". And that’s fine if you have a line faddish, but what about the good old tried and true "UseThisStyle".

 

CamelCase is my favorite - it uses less space, for one - but sometimes even CamelCase is hard to read - when you're using well-known acronyms in your field names, for instance. I sometimes use an underscore then. I also use underscores for "utility suffixes" - for instance, naming tables used only in scripts TableName_script.

 

One point about the __pk_ and _fk_ prefixing convention advocated by Love et al. is that if you follow David Head's advice to make sure your real key fields are not actually seen by users lest they assign them some "objective" significance, there should be very few instances in which the users are actually exposed to such field names. I think.

 

Oh one other thought. Don't be afraid to think way of of the box by doing stuff like NameFirst, NameLast and NameMiddle. It keeps your related fields together in sort order which FirstName, LastName and MiddleName will not do.

 

So, pretend you're naming your fields in a Romance language, with nouns before adjectives? For once we are at an advantage in this English-dominated world. smiley-smile

 

Just think through the process and stick with it regardless of what some stark raving lunatic will advise you with some cock-ah-mayme-naming-convention.smiley-tongue-out

 

That's what I find hardest. Consistency is something I aspire to but cannot seem to achieve.

[AHunter3]

Very very worst conventions I've had the misfortune to see:

 

 

a) A printing company that stuck, I kid you not, SERIAL NUMBERS within each table name and each field name. The first serial was the serial of the file, the second serial was the serial of the table, and then serials were generated for each field type. And then suffixes were generated for broader field types. So the field I would have called JobNumber was something like J__07704_41614_000_Job_Number_num_auto. Zillions and zillions and zillions of fields in each table started out with the same messy string in front (try type-ahead in THAT environment!).

 

b) Cellphone company, former developer was seriously into anchor-buoy. A typical seven-table file would have perhaps 63 table occurrences for no discernable reason (i.e., the relationship of TableA to TableB would be exactly the same in each anchorbuoy-grouping; the structure wasn't appreciably different). Then prefix city, with a mixture of underscores and double-underscores. Field names likewise. Finally, to cap it all off, the developer liked dashes (aka minus signs) in file names and would override the warning about them being a bad idea in TOs, and use 'em that way anyhow. FileMaker would accomodate that by sticking the horrid TO name in curly-brackets with dollar sign prefixes. Thus a field I would have preferred to think of as TaskType::SerialNo or something would show up in scripts as

{$PTO-MIN__MINLOG_rpt__tsk_}::fk__serial_no.

[Jack Rodgers]

Evolution over 20 years has pointed me in this direction:

 

BOOLEAN_in_stock

BOOLEAN_done

 

LINK_contract_id

LINK_payment_id

LINK_monthly_item

 

ADDRESS_first

ADDRESS_last

ADDRESS_street

 

CCARD_number

CCARD-expires

 

I find that grouping fields by use makes them easier to understand and find in a file that might have a hundred fields and 10 different groupings. It is a bit of a pain, however, when I use the field names on the layout. But when you click sort by field it all becomes so clear...

 

Use is so much more important to me than field type and cryptic defs.

[harryglos]

Hi Fellow FileMaker-Ins,

 

Ender stop trying to confuse us with facts! You just remember FileMaker may have made the database but I’m the ones using it… So who are they to tell me how it should work? Now that was really a good point right there.smiley-surprised

And what the heck is ol LingoJango talking about a CamelCase. My God man don’t people use a simple BriefCase anymore. You don’t need this convention for every day conversation ya know. You can simply put Camel Case and Brief Case. Some people take things so literal.

Jack look… All you had to do was sign in and write “Harry’s right again” and everything would have been just fine. But what can we expect. One of these deadbeats even quoted David Head and no body dose that.smiley-wink So I can understand that was enough to throw you off your game.smiley-tongue-out

So you guys just keep on doing things your own way. You don’t need to be concerned about what you may become… You can always serve as a pitiful example!smiley-laughing

Harry

[Jack Rodgers]

Jack look… All you had to do was sign in and write “Harry’s right again” and everything would have been just fine. But what can we expect. One of these deadbeats even quoted David Head and no body dose that.smiley-wink So I can understand that was enough to throw you off your game.

 

I see you are in Tampa so I can only assume that being surrounded by all those old aged people has triggered dementia within your cranium... Yeah

 

Actually in rereading your post in this thread I didn't see anything in it that resembled what I posted above so it is obvious you are nothing more than a west coast carpetbagger trying to grab hold of some of my glory for your own porpoise. Yeah

[harryglos]

Jack said: you are nothing more than a west coast carpetbagger trying to grab hold of some of my glory for your own porpoise

.

 

OK... I obviously can't disagree with any of that because I did do it on porpoise! But was that the sole reason for the dancing bananas?smiley-laughing

 

Harry

[Jack Rodgers]

.

 

OK... I obviously can't disagree with any of that because I did do it on porpoise! But was that the sole reason for the dancing bananas?smiley-laughing

 

Harry

 

Once someone discovered how to make them work, I fell in love with them.

 

Yeah

Boo

Hooray

Yippee