Standard Naming Conventions

[RTP]

I have the Microsoft Access Bible and it talks about using Standard Naming
Conventions...for example, preceding your Table name with "tbl", preceding
your column name with the object prefix, "chr".

Does anyone use these standard naming conventions or any other for that
matter or is this pretty much a shop call??? If you simply use Access, they
do not seem to use any standard naming conventions. Looks pretty free-form to
me.

Let me know your thoughts regarding this subject.

Thanks soooooo much!

 

[Rick B]

I use them for my objects. tblXxxxx qryXxxxx RptXxxxx, etc.

Rick B

 

[Sprinks]

Litwin, Getz, and Gilbert, authors of the Access97 Developer's Handbook, use
the RVBA naming conventions, and argue that, "A consistent naming standard
can make it simple for you to find errors lurking in your programs, in
addition to making them simpler for multiple programmers to maintain. By
using the RVBA naming convention you gain two pieces of information about
every variable: which datatype it is and what scope it has. This
information can be very helpful during the debugging process."

Sprinks

 

[Brendan Reynolds]

The most widely used conventions are the Reddick VBA (RVBA) conventions,
which you can find at the author's web site, www.xoc.net

In my experience most (though certainly not all) professional Access
developers seem to use some subset of those conventions.

 

[John Vinson]

I have the Microsoft Access Bible and it talks about using Standard Naming
Conventions...for example, preceding your Table name with "tbl", preceding
your column name with the object prefix, "chr".

Does anyone use these standard naming conventions or any other for that
matter or is this pretty much a shop call??? If you simply use Access, they
do not seem to use any standard naming conventions. Looks pretty free-form to
me.

It is.

There's an old saying: "God must love naming conventions, She made so
many of them!" There may be somewhat more naming conventions in use
than there are Access developers <g>.

In short - use what works for you, lets you keep track of your
objects, and doesn't put you to lots of extra work. I'd see no benefit
to having 39 tables in your database all with tbl as part of their
name - they're all TABLES durn it!

On the other hand, having prefixes for form controls - txtThisField
for a textbox, cboThatfield for a combo - makes it easier to
understand code referencing those controls; and naming queries by the
type of query (appThisAppendQuery, updAnUpdateQuery, xtabCrosstab
etc.) can be useful.

This whole subject can lead to heated discussions and strong opinions.
Personally I'm pretty laid-back about it... <g>

John W. Vinson[MVP]

 

[Larry Linson]

Let me know your thoughts regarding
this subject.

Brendan provided a link to the most-widely-used naming conventions at Greg
Reddick's site. Some of my colleagues argue against naming conventions, some
will tell you "whatever works for your shop". I have worked for a number of
years in the contracting environment, where you often work on databases
created and previously maintained by others, and strongly believe that a
"shop standard" is insufficient.

If you use the Reddick conventions, as has also been said, a new contractor
won't have to pay the learning curve for your (non-standard) shop
conventions. Besides which, Greg Reddick has already done the "heavy
lifting" of creating the naming convention, making it standard and
consistent, which is no small task.

Larry Linson
Microsoft Access MVP

 

[Larry Linson]

Standards are not written by software
vendors; they are written by organi-
zations such as ANSI and ISO. . . .

The OP did not use Litwin, Getz, et al's words when he mentioned "Standard
Naming Convention". Conventions are adopted by individuals, groups, or
companies and are not "Standards" as officially propounded by the
organizations you mention.

The Reddick Naming Convention (summarized in the Developer's Handbooks
written by Litwin, Getz, et al, published by Sybex) has been adopted by
many Access developers; it is the most widely used naming convention in the
Access world, but it is certainly not the only one.

Larry Linson
Microsoft Access MVP