Primary key/foreign Key naming convention
database-design, naming-conventions, sql
Solution
It doesn't really matter. I've never run into a system where there is a real difference between choice 1 and choice 2.
Jeff Atwood had a great article a while back on this topic. Basically people debate and argue the most furiously those topics which they cannot be proven wrong on. Or from a different angle, those topics which can only be won through filibuster style endurance based last-man-standing arguments.
Pick one and tell them to focus on issues that actually impact your code.
EDIT: If you want to have fun, have them specify at length why their method is superior for recursive table references.
Problem
In our dev group we have a raging debate regarding the naming convention for Primary and Foreign Keys. There's basically two schools of thought in our group: 1: ``` Primary Table (Employee) Primary Key is called ID Foreign table (Event) Foreign key is called EmployeeID ``` or 2: ``` Primary Table (Employee) Primary Key is called EmployeeID Foreign table (Event) Foreign key is called EmployeeID ``` I prefer not to duplicate the name of the table in any of the columns (So I prefer option 1 above). Conceptually, it is consistent with a lot of the recommended practices in other languages, where you don't use the name of the object in its property names. I think that naming the foreign key `EmployeeID` (or `Employee_ID` might be better) tells the reader that it is the `ID` column of the `Employee` Table. Some others prefer option 2 where you name the primary key prefixed with the table name so that the column name is the same throughout the database. I see that point, but you now can not visually distinguish a primary key from a foreign key. Also, I think it's redundant to have the table name in the column name, because if you think of the table as an entity and a column as a property or attribute of that entity, you think of it as the ID attribute of the `Employee`, not the `EmployeeID` attribute of an employee. I don't go an ask my coworker what his `PersonAge` or `PersonGender` is. I ask him what his Age is. So like I said, it's a raging debate and we go on and on and on about it. I'm interested to get some new perspectives.