CHAPTER 1 Names and Data Elements
This is the old joke:
“When I was a kid, we had three cats.”
“What were their names?”
“Cat, cat, and cat.”
“That sounds screwed up. How did you tell them apart?”
“Who cares? Cats don’t come when you call them anyway!”
YOUR DATA WILL not come when it is called either if you do not give it a name that is always distinct and recognizable. This is an important part of any database project. Bad names for the data elements make the code difficult, or even impossible, to read.
I am not kidding about impossible to read. In the old days, software companies used to deliberately scramble source code names and remove formatting to hide the algorithm from the buyers. The tradition seems to linger on, even if not by intent. ...
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