Many organizations want to apply naming conventions for their database/ data warehouse models. It is especially important for among mid and large sized companies. Now SqlDBM supports this requirement. Naming conventions are in easy way to apply uniform corporate naming standards rules, and in SqlDBM include object names, abbreviations, lengths, and special characters. Learn more below to see what this feature includes:
Naming Conventions: Case Standards
You can define attribute names using naming rules:
- None — no rules
- UPPER_CASE — all letters are capitalized, words are separated with underlines
- lower_case — all letters are lower case, words are separated with underlines
- Title_Case — words* are separated with underscores and start with a capital letter
- camelCase — the first word begins with a lower case letter, the remaining words are capital letters. All words are combined together
- PascalCase — all words* begins with capital letters and no spaces, underscores or hyphens allowed. All words are combined together
In this example, you can see how how the Cases Standards rules will affect objects names in your project.
Please note that Cases Standards rules affect names of all object types.
Naming Conventions: Object Naming
You can add prefixes and suffixes to names of diffrenets object types. Just add any symbols before or after expression of an object name. Expressions are marked as “${…}”. If you want to add or delete prefix, type it before the dollar sign (“$”). Or if you need to add suffix, type it after the closing brace (“}”).
For instance, if you wand to add prefix (pre_) and suffix (_sffx) for table object, type expression pre_${TableName}_sffx for any of your table objects.
Preffixes and suffixes are not affected by Case standards, so you have more flexibility for creating the rules. Let’s say, you set UPPER_CASE in case standards and added pre_${TableName}_sffx, after saving the rules, new table object will have “pre_TABLE_1_sffx” name.
Naming Conventions: Saving and Applying
After you are done with settings Naming conventions, save the rules by clicking “Save Settings” button — all new objects you created will have names matching the established rules.
You can also apply naming conventions to your existing database model. In order to that, you need to click “Apply for existing objects” button, all object names which don’t follow naming conventions will be changed. Pay attention to these objects as they will be considered as new ones for Compare Revisons and Alter script features. So we recommend you to set up the rules at the very beginning of the project.
Naming Conventions: Validate Changes
You or your team do not need to remember the established rules. Just mark “Validate when saving” checkbox, and after each saving, SqlDBM will offer to rename objects that don’t follow naming conventions you have in place.
