Category: Naming

Solomon Rutzky shows what metadata doesn’t get updated when you call sp_rename on a T-SQL procedure, function, view, or trigger:

This behavior is noted in the Microsoft documentation for sp_rename:

Renaming a stored procedure, function, view, or trigger will not change the name of the corresponding object name in the definition column of the sys.sql_modules catalog view. Therefore, we recommend that sp_rename not be used to rename these object types. Instead, drop and re-create the object with its new name.

Ok, so we have all been warned, at least when it comes to using sp_rename. But that is not the end of the story. There is, indeed, another way to change the object such that the definition does not reflect its current state. And that other way has to do with something missing from the examples shown thus far, something that wouldn’t be missing had I been following best-practices.

Click through to see what else doesn’t get updated.

Daniel Hutmacher has a great way of generating fake company names:

This query is actually a lot simpler than it first appears. Here’s how it breaks down:

• Pick 100 words at random (table “a”)

• For each word in “a”, if possible, pick a single random word (“b”) that doesn’t start or end with the same three letters as the “a” word.

• For each word in “b”, if possible, pick a single random word (“c”) that doesn’t start or end with the same three letters as the “a” nor the “b” word.

• The UPPER(), LEFT() and SUBSTRING() stuff is just to turn the names into title case.

• As before, the ORDER BY NEWID() randomizes the order in which the TOP (1) row is returned.

My favorite name when running this was Disaster Votes, followed closely by Fail Users Vendor and Terminated Enterprise.  Apparently my SQL Server instance has a very negative impression of my made up companies’ leadership skills.

Chris Webb is concerned about the under-use of the name “Power Query”:

In more recent times I’ve written posts with unwieldy names like “Introduction to Insert Topic Name Here in Power Query/Power BI/Excel 2016 Get & Transform” and in the future I suppose this will have to grow to “Introduction to Insert Topic Name Here in Power Query/Power BI/Excel 2016 Get & Transform/Analysis Services Data Loading/Common Data Service”. Tagging and categorising blog posts can help here, I know, but it’s the title of a blog post that’s the main determining factor as to whether it gets read or not when someone is looking at a list of search results. It’s getting ridiculous, but how else can I ensure that someone searching for the solution to a data loading problem in Excel 2016 Get & Transform will find a post I’ve written that contains the answer but shown in Power BI?

Commenters agree that there’s a lot of ambiguity and multiple naming, and that this hurts end users who don’t necessarily know that all of these technologies are really the same Power Query engine.

Kenneth Fisher explains the different parts of an object name in SQL Server:

One Part Name
vIndividualCustomer
This is just the name of the object. This is probably the most common usage and yet the only one I would recommend never using. (I’ll freely admit I’m not great at this myself btw.) When you only use a single name the schema is implied by the default schema of the user running the statement. That means that the same statement run by two different users could have two different meanings. Since most users have a default schema of dbo this would probably hit the object dbo.vIndividualCustomer. Assuming one even existed.

Click through for more.

Michael Swart introduces Field & Record magazine:

I’m definitely a descriptivist. Language is always changing and if a word or phrase gets adopted widely enough, it is no longer “wrong” (whatever that means).

So when I hear “Field” and “Record” they’re acceptable to me. But if I’m explaining something, I don’t want to distract from the thing I’m saying. And from that point of view, I try to use “Row” and “Column” because I don’t know anyone who blinks at those terms.

Entity and Attribute or bust.  That’s my philosophy.