Field Naming Standards

Standards are needed to protect your investment in the Repository. Following is a field naming suggestion for in-house application development, (as opposed to vendor package development).

Fields identifier (or short names) could be in the format xxxxxxiii where:

• A field name should be 9 characters or less and should not contain an '#' or '@' symbol.
• The xxxxxx part of the name should be 1 to 6 characters and as meaningful as possible given the size limitation. For example: PARTNO- Part Number, CUSTNO- Customer Number, SALQTY- Sales Quantity.
• The iii is optional and should be used for "working" or temporary versions of the original xxxxxx field in RDML functions.  The iii suffix should be standardized and only a limited number of variations allowed. For example:
  WRK- working value of the field
  VIR- virtual field definition
  TOT- totaled value of the field.
• All iii suffix versions of the field should be defined in the Repository.

Also note the following recommendations:

• Table definitions should only contain xxxxxx field names (with the exception of virtual fields and predetermined join fields).
• Do not define fields in RDML functions, even when the reference field option is used.  This greatly strengthens the cross-referencing power of LANSA.  Use the reference field option wherever possible.

An additional advantage of the above naming suggestion is that if you attempt to change the Repository and specify field name xxxxxx, all the iii variations will also appear due to LANSA's generic search and display facility.

While you may not choose to follow the example provided, we strongly recommend that you enforce a set of standards for field names at your site.

Please review the LANSA Object Names in the LANSA Technical Reference Guide.

Create Fields in the Repository Tutorial.