[Pdx-pm] (OT) SQL style question
Austin Schutz
tex at off.org
Thu Jan 13 14:15:07 PST 2005
On Thu, Jan 13, 2005 at 02:02:06PM -0800, Ovid wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> Sorry for the OT question (well, it's not completely OT as this impacts
> how Bricolage 2.0 will be implemented.)
>
> We have views that reference more than one table. Our views have a
> primary table they are based upon and fields from "non-primary tables."
> To make it very clear which fields are which, there's been a bit of
> discussion regarding how to make it visually distinct that a particular
> field is from a table that is not the primary table of the view. Which
> of the following is clearer?
>
> Using double underscores to separate the other table name from its
> field name:
>
> SELECT id,
> first_name,
> last_name,
> other_table__id,
> other_table__name
> FROM some_view
>
Seems quite clear to me.
> Quoting column names and using periods as separators:
>
> SELECT "id",
> "first_name",
> "last_name",
> "other_table.id",
> "other_table.name"
> FROM some_view
>
This scares me. I'm not sure if it's portable, but it will
_definitely_ bite you when someone forgets the "s. I've never even
seen this done before.. what happens when you join something with the
view and need to specify a column? SELECT some_view."other_table.id" ?
Scary.
> Is the latter portable? Is the former too confusing? Which is easier
> to read? Are there reasonable alternatives?
I don't know of any alternatives, but I'd be interested to know
if there were.
Austin
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