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| | | Singular or Plural There are all sorts of interesting debates that developers will have about programming. One of those I've written about in the past is Spaces v Tabs. There's a lot of discussion about that one, and certainly no share of strong opinions. I'm sure there are plenty of other development paradigms and habits that will create debate, arguments, and perhaps strain some working relationships. While I'm not looking to upset anyone, I ran across a discussion recently and thought this would make an interesting debate. If you've got an opinion, please share how and why you might choose to follow your convention. Examples are helpful and may enhance the reasons why you go choose to build systems one way or the other. If you examine any sample databases out there, you will run across tables named like this: Customers, Orders, Cities, etc. You might also find Product, Person, Address as well. If you are paying attention, you might notice that my examples are both singular and plural in their form. There are no shortage of debates on the topic, but I'm wondering what many of you think. I've tended to build tables with plural nouns in the past, but I think that's because the first few people that taught me did that. As I've read more and listened to others explain their design decisions, I've embraced singular names. After all, the entity being modeled is often a single instance of a type. A Person or a CreditCard, not a series of them, though we could certainly argue the table is a set of people, so use that. Ultimately I'm not sure that it matters much in any particular application. We certainly have databases that using each convention, and probably a few that use both inside the same schema. I think choosing an entity name that is easy to understand is important, and maybe the idea of singular or plural names matters less. After all, as long as you're not naming tables F42 and H1492, everyone will get used to the convention. Steve Jones from SQLServerCentral.comJoin the debate, and respond to today's editorial on the forums |
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| | |  | Bob Hovious from SQLServerCentral.com Although it is common to group by periods such as Week, Month, or Quarter, sometimes alternative periods are needed. This simple technique lets you split a year into periods with any number of days. More » |
 | Additional Articles from Database Journal Have you ever wanted to know how many pages in your database have changed since the last full backup? If so, then you will be glad to hear that the SQL Server 2017 version of the DMV, sys.dm_db_file_spavce_usage, has a new column named modified_extent_page_count, which shows the number of pages that have changed since the last full backup. More » |
 | Technical sessions will dive into the latest Microsoft SQL Server releases, and cover topical issues such as data compliance, protection & privacy. More » |
 | meaganl from SQLServerCentral Blogs I have decided to write a series of blog posts about visual design concepts that can have a big impact... More » |
| | David Postlethwaite from SQLServerCentral Blogs This David's SQL Server Saturday talk titled an introduction to Azure SQL Databases It does pretty much what is says on... More » |
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| | | Today's Question (by Steve Jones): I want to build an advent calendar for Christmas that will count down the days to Christmas, while showing the current date. Which one of these works the best? -- Query 1 WITH myTally (n) AS ( SELECT TOP 25 n = ROW_NUMBER() OVER (ORDER BY (SELECT NULL)) FROM ( VALUES (1),(2),(3),(4),(5),(6),(7),(8),(9),(10)) AS a (n) CROSS JOIN ( VALUES (1),(2),(3)) AS b (n) ) SELECT Today = DATEADD(DAY, 25 - n, '2017-12-25'), DaysLeft = 25 - n FROM myTally; -- Query 2 GO WITH myTally (n) AS ( SELECT TOP 25 n = ROW_NUMBER() OVER (ORDER BY (SELECT NULL)) FROM ( VALUES (1),(2),(3),(4),(5),(6),(7),(8),(9),(10)) AS a (n) CROSS JOIN ( VALUES (1),(2),(3)) AS b (n) ) SELECT Today = DATEADD(DAY, n, '2017-12-25'), DaysLeft = 25 - n FROM myTally; GO -- Query 3 WITH myTally (n) AS ( SELECT TOP 25 n = ROW_NUMBER() OVER (ORDER BY (SELECT NULL)) FROM ( VALUES (1),(2),(3),(4),(5),(6),(7),(8),(9),(10)) AS a (n) CROSS JOIN ( VALUES (1),(2),(3)) AS b (n) ) SELECT Today = DATEADD(DAY, n - 25, '2017-12-25'), DaysLeft = 25 - n FROM myTally; GO -- Query 4 WITH myTally (n) AS ( SELECT TOP 25 n = ROW_NUMBER() OVER (ORDER BY (SELECT NULL)) FROM ( VALUES (1),(2),(3),(4),(5),(6),(7),(8),(9),(10)) AS a (n) CROSS JOIN ( VALUES (1),(2),(3)) AS b (n) ) SELECT Today = DATEADD(DAY, n - 25, '2017-12-25'), DaysLeft = n FROM myTally; GO |
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| Yesterday's Question of the Day |
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| Database Pros Who Need Your Help |
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