Menu
What is the best practice for naming the column that is the primary key for a mysql table? I have seen two ways:
I would have thought just id would suffice, because you can still uniquely identify the column by selecting the column proceeded by a period and the table name (i.e. for the column 'id' in the table 'cars', you could select it as cars.id)
Or am I over-thinking it all?
455
For columns that are the primary key for a table and uniquely identify each record in the table, the name should be [TableName] + “Id” (e.g. On the Make table, the primary key column would be “MakeId”).
To change a column name, enter the following statement in your MySQL shell: ALTER TABLE table_name RENAME COLUMN old_column_name TO new_column_name; Replace table_name , old_column_name , and new_column_name with your table and column names.
In the relational model of databases, a primary key is a specific choice of a minimal set of attributes (columns) that uniquely specify a tuple (row) in a relation (table). Informally, a primary key is "which attributes identify a record," and in simple cases constitute a single attribute: a unique ID.
@T.J. Crowder: MySQL doesn't have row id's outside whatever is in the table like eg. Postres does. The only unique identifier in a MySQL table is any unique index/primary key in the table.
I usually name them as [tblname]_id. The reason is simple. Let's say I have two tables:
member
member_id
member_alias
...
post
post_id
member_id
post_text
...
Now I can join them with MySQLs USING-syntax and save a few characters for each join:
SELECT post.*, member_id, member_alias FROM post
INNER JOIN member USING (member_id)
Of course, this is all mostly subjective.
124
If you love us? You can donate to us via Paypal or buy me a coffee so we can maintain and grow! Thank you!
Donate Us With
