Database naming convention

2 minutes to read

Using plural or singular table name

A table is a collection of entity and it is logical to use plural name for a table.
It makes sense to write SQL statement to get all records from your table, e.g. select * from customers

Use singular table name when pointing to a database record is more natural than plural name. e.g. select customer.name and select customers.name
- For plural table name, you can use table alias e.g. select customer.name from customers as customer.
It avoids confusion of English pluralization:
- activity becomes activities
- person becomes people
- data remains data
- history remains history (uncountable noun, only singular form)
It avoids confusion when use a link table.
- Orders and Products tables would give OrderProducts or OrdersProducts. Neither sounds correct.
When using singular, you can consider using the set theory to a table. It means any instance in the set is representative of the set.
Table represents a collection of entity. Then we don't need to emphasize it by plural naming.
Consistent foreign key column's name with table prefix pattern e.g. customer_id not customers_id.
If you want to identify a collection in an application, you can use a plural name such as customers.
For ORM e.g. Enitiy Framwork (EF), you can access an entity as dbContext.DbSet<Customer> which is consistent with a singular table name.

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