best practice

Question

Hi all

will there be any issues if i name a table as   dbo.[1table] , instead of naming it as just dbo.[table]

dbo.[1table] vs dbo.[table]

the reason i had to naem like that is i have 10 different tables with different names i want to order then based on their hierarchy

Answer 1

You won't be able to refer to that table without the brackets, since SQL identifiers cannot start with numbers.  You should use "table1" without brackets.

I get a sinking suspicion somehow that whatever you are doing with these tables is better done in some other method.  Would you mind sharing your use case?

Answer 2

Having a table name that starts with a number will require usage of the [] everywhere. I suggest to not use such convention in your code and always try to create names which abide to correct identifier rules and don't require brackets.

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For every expert, there is an equal and opposite expert. - Becker's Law


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Answer 3

starting a table name with a number is not a good idea. also, the name 1table is not very descriptive. Maybe think of a better table name?

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John

http://knowledgy.org

Answer 4

You are violating ANSI standards; we use the double quotes and not square brackets.

You are violating ISO standards; names never begin with digits or underscores. The name "table" is meta data and cannot be used as part of a table name in a schema. 

You have a bad data model. Tables are sets of the same kind of entities; there is no hierarchy or sequence to them. We use descriptive table  names instead. 

 That used to happen with magnetic tape file labels. Is that what you are doing!? 

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--CELKO-- Books in Celko Series for Morgan-Kaufmann Publishing: Analytics and OLAP in SQL / Data and Databases: Concepts in Practice Data / Measurements and Standards in SQL SQL for Smarties / SQL Programming Style / SQL Puzzles and Answers / Thinking in Sets / Trees and Hierarchies in SQL

Answer 5

I suggest you follow standard identifier naming conventions so you don't need to enclose object names.  I don't know the details of your requirement but maybe a convention like dbo.t1_table will do the job.

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Dan Guzman, SQL Server MVP, http://weblogs.sqlteam.com/dang/