The
Nyulian (pronounced "nool-ian") Naming Convention refers to a method for naming fields in a
database.
The convention is based around using a 3 letter prefix on each
field name. The
prefix is a reference to the name of the
table containing the field. For example, a table called "UserProfiles" might contain the following fields:
USR_USRID
USR_FirstName
USR_LastName
The first field in the table is the
primary key for the table. Notice that the field name (less the prefix) is the same as the prefix, with "ID" suffixed. This makes it easy to identify
foreign key links between tables. For example, a table called "Cubicles" could reference "UserProfiles" to indicate what user is sitting in the cubicle, and might contain these fields:
CUB_CUBID
CUB_Floor
CUB_PhoneNumber
CUB_USRID
It's easy to identify the CUB_USRID field as a foreign key, and
developers that are even mildly familiar with the database will be able to quickly ascertain that the foreign key is linked to the "UserProfile" table.
Another advantage of the
Nyulian Naming Convention is realized when coding
SQL statements, particularly for
JOINs. Since each table has a unique 3 letter suffix applied to each field, each field throughout the database is unique. Therefore, it is no longer necessary to
alias table names or append table names to field names when JOINing tables. For example:
SELECT * from Cubicles INNER JOIN UserProfiles ON CUB_USRID = USR_USRID
The naming convention is useful for
small to medium sized databases, however, it can be difficult to maintain and it's usefulness declines when used for large databases. The greater the number of tables in the database, the more difficult it becomes to create
obvious and meaningful 3 letter combinations.
The naming convention is named after
Frank Nyul who developed it in 1998 while working for (the now defunct)
Daedalian Systems Group in
Toronto,
Ontario,
Canada.
Note: I am not Frank Nyul. And I have used this naming convention on a number of projects.