Release 10.1A: OpenEdge Development:
Progress Dynamics Basic Development

Schema naming conventions

This section describes the conventions, which are only guidelines, you should follow when you name an entity (database table) or a data field (database field). Here are some conventions for entities and fields:

Choose an entity or field name (table name or data field name) that is meaningful and adequately describes the entity or field being defined. Avoid general terms such as category and type. These cause confusion when used to refer to different kinds of information on different tables in a database. Even if your current database only uses a term in one place, consider that you might integrate other databases into your application in the future. These generic names run the greatest risk of a conflict with future Progress keywords. You can avoid problems by expanding such names into a more specific, meaningful term (for example, “user_category” or “document_type”).
Make your entity or field names singular, (for example, “customer” not “customers”).
Avoid hyphens as separators. The hyphen is not a valid separator in SQL, Java, and some other languages. At some point, you might need to access your database from these languages, either directly, through one of the OpenEdge® DataServers, or through the OpenEdge® Open AppServer. Instead, use an underscore as the separator between the “words” of an entity or field name or use mixed-case letters. Because Progress keywords never contain underscores, using at least one underscore in entity or field names guarantees that the name will never clash with any keyword. In addition, underscores help with ERwin integration, as described in a later section.