Re: [Gnumed-devel] Questions re database schema:street:address:urb:country

[Horst Herb]

On Mon, 30 Aug 2004 08:22, Richard Terry wrote:
> 1) NOMENCLATURE in table generating queries:
>
>         -Given that one will be doing various joins (and I'm not sure if
> 8.0 supports outer), is there a reason not to name the ID's and feids
>  better:
>
> ===================================
> CREATE TABLE public.country
> (
>   id serial NOT NULL,  (eg id_country serial NOT NULL)
>   code char(2) NOT NULL, (eg country_code....
>   name text NOT NULL,     (country_name)
>   deprecated date,               (country_deprecated)
>
> CREATE TABLE public.country
> (
>   id_country serial NOT NULL,
>   country_code char(2) NOT NULL,
>   country_name text NOT NULL,   
>   country_deprecated date,..... etc

No, because in the join you have to explicitly name all duplicate columns like
select country.id, urb.id from country, urb ...

The way yu would name it would notonly quickly exhaust the 32 byte variable 
length in some cases and cause finger cramps in poor programmers, it would 
also take a lot of reusability out of code (like a code weeding out all 
"deprecated" rows of a table)

Horst