simple or global column names?

From: george young <gry(at)ll(dot)mit(dot)edu>
To: pgsql-novice(at)postgresql(dot)org
Subject: simple or global column names?
Date: 2005-11-08 15:28:26
Message-ID: 20051108102826.1dfe7b32.gry@ll.mit.edu
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[PostgreSQL 7.4RC2 on i686-pc-linux-gnu] [soon to upgrade to 8.x]

I have a simple schema design question. I'm torn between:

create table steps(step text, step_version int, substep text, substep_version int);

and:
create table steps(step text, version int, substep text, substep_version int)

I.e., should a field in steps be "version" or "step_version"? On one hand,
the "step_" prefix is redundant noise in this context, but for doing joins,
it seems like globally distinct names might make things clearer.

Are there other advantages/disadvantages to these naming schemes?

My goals (in this major schema reorganization) are simplicty, clarity, and
in particular, to facilitate nieve users' read-only ODBC access through
Excel or other GUI clients.

-- George Young

--
"Are the gods not just?" "Oh no, child.
What would become of us if they were?" (CSL)

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