Database table names: Plural or Singular [closed]

Question

What is the most common naming convention for SQL Database tables? Was it historically one way and now it's better to do another way? What are the most common practices now?

Answer 1

I always use plural for table names and singular for column names. Not that there's any real technical reason for it, that's just what I prefer.

Doesn't much matter, so long as you are consistent.

I.e.

+========+       +==========+
| Posts  |       | Users    |
+--------+       +----------+
| idPost |   |-> | idUser   |
| Poster | <-|   | Name     |
+========+       +==========+

My reasoning for this is what happens when you write the actual query:

SELECT idPost, Name FROM Posts
INNER JOIN Users ON Poster = idUser

If you use singular, it looks like you're selecting from a post, rather than from the set of all posts, and joining to a single user, instead of all users.

Answer 2

Nope - singular for me. It's the "USER" table.