Academia has it that table names should be the singular of the entity that they store attributes of.
I dislike any T-SQL that requires square brackets around names, but I have renamed a Users table to the singular, forever sentencing those using the table to sometimes have to use brackets.
My gut feel is that it is more correct to stay with the singular, but my gut feel is also that brackets indicate undesirables like column names with spaces in them etc.
Should I stay, or should I go?
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I also would go with plurals, and with the aforementioned Users dilemma, we do take the square bracketing approach.
We do this to provide uniformity between both database architecture and application architecture, with the underlying understanding that the Users table is a collection of User values as much as a Users collection in a code artifact is a collection of User objects.
Having our data team and our developers speaking the same conceptual language (although not always the same object names) makes it easier to convey ideas between them.
This may be a bit redundant, but I would suggest being cautious. Not necessarily that it's a bad thing to rename tables, but standardization is just that; a standard -- this database may already be "standardized", however badly :) -- I would suggest consistency to be a better goal given that this database already exists and presumably it consists of more than just 2 tables.
Unless you can standardize the entire database, or at least are planning to work towards that end, I suspect that table names are just the tip of the iceberg and concentrating on the task at hand, enduring the pain of poorly named objects, may be in your best interest --
Practical consistency sometimes is the best standard... :)
my2cents ---
I always use singular table names but, as already stated, the most important thing is to be consistent and use the same form for all names.
What I don't like about plural table names is that combined names can get quite strange. If for example you have a table named Users and you want to store properties for the user, this would result in a table named UsersProperties...
I always thought that was a dumb convention. I use plural table names.
(I believe the rational behind that policy is that it make it easier for ORM code generators to produce object & collection classes, since it is easier to produce a plural name from a singular name than vice-versa)
Guidelines are really there as just that. It's not "set in stone" that's why you have the option of being able to ignore them.
I would say that it's more logically intuitive to have pluralized table names. A table is a collection of entity after all. In addition to other alternatives mentioned I commonly see prefixes on table names...
I'm not suggesting this is the way to go, I also see spaces used a LOT in table names which I abhor. I've even come across field names with idiotic characters like ? as if to say this field answers a question.
If you go there will be trouble, but if you stay it will be double.
I'd much rather go against some supposed non-plurals naming convention than name my table after something which might be a reserved word.
As others have mentioned here, conventions should be a tool for adding to the ease of use and readability. Not as a shackle or a club to torture developers.
That said, my personal preference is to use singular names for both tables and columns. This probably comes from my programming background. Class names are generally singular unless they are some sort of collection. In my mind I am storing or reading individual records in the table in question, so singular makes sense to me.
This practice also allows me to reserve plural table names for those that store many-to-many relationships between my objects.
I try to avoid reserved words in my table and column names, as well. In the case in question here it makes more sense to go counter to the singular convention for Users to avoid the need to encapsulate a table that uses the reserved word of User.
I like using prefixes in a limited manner (tbl for table names, sp_ for proc names, etc), though many believe this adds clutter. I also prefer CamelBack names to underscores because I always end up hitting the + instead of _ when typing the name. Many others disagree.
Here is another good link for naming convention guidelines: http://www.xaprb.com/blog/2008/10/26/the-power-of-a-good-sql-naming-convention/
Remember that the most important factor in your convention is that it make sense to the people interacting with the database in question. There is no "One Ring to Rule Them All" when it comes to naming conventions.
I had same question, and after reading all answers here I definitely stay with SINGULAR, reasons:
Reason 1 (Concept). You can think of bag containing apples like "AppleBag", it doesn't matter if contains 0, 1 or a million apples, it is always the same bag. Tables are just that, containers, the table name must describe what it contains, not how much data it contains. Additionally, the plural concept is more about a spoken language one (actually to determine whether there is one or more).
Reason 2. (Convenience). it is easier come out with singular names, than with plural ones. Objects can have irregular plurals or not plural at all, but will always have a singular one (with few exceptions like News).
Reason 3. (Aesthetic and Order). Specially in master-detail scenarios, this reads better, aligns better by name, and have more logical order (Master first, Detail second):
Compared to:
Reason 4 (Simplicity). Put all together, Table Names, Primary Keys, Relationships, Entity Classes... is better to be aware of only one name (singular) instead of two (singular class, plural table, singular field, singular-plural master-detail...)
CustomerCustomer.CustomerIDCustomerAddresspublic Class Customer {...}SELECT FROM Customer WHERE CustomerID = 100Once you know you are dealing with "Customer", you can be sure you will use the same word for all of your database interaction needs.
Reason 5. (Globalization). The world is getting smaller, you may have a team of different nationalities, not everybody has English as a native language. It would be easier for a non-native English language programmer to think of "Repository" than of "Repositories", or "Status" instead of "Statuses". Having singular names can lead to fewer errors caused by typos, save time by not having to think "is it Child or Children?", hence improving productivity.
Reason 6. (Why not?). It can even save you writing time, save you disk space, and even make your computer keyboard last longer!
SELECT Customer.CustomerName FROM Customer WHERE Customer.CustomerID = 100SELECT Customers.CustomerName FROM Customers WHERE Customers.CustomerID = 100You have saved 3 letters, 3 bytes, 3 extra keyboard hits :)
And finally, you can name those ones messing up with reserved names like:
Or use the infamous square brackets [User]
This may be a bit redundant, but I would suggest being cautious. Not necessarily that it's a bad thing to rename tables, but standardization is just that; a standard -- this database may already be "standardized", however badly :) -- I would suggest consistency to be a better goal given that this database already exists and presumably it consists of more than just 2 tables.
Unless you can standardize the entire database, or at least are planning to work towards that end, I suspect that table names are just the tip of the iceberg and concentrating on the task at hand, enduring the pain of poorly named objects, may be in your best interest --
Practical consistency sometimes is the best standard... :)
my2cents ---
I always thought that was a dumb convention. I use plural table names.
(I believe the rational behind that policy is that it make it easier for ORM code generators to produce object & collection classes, since it is easier to produce a plural name from a singular name than vice-versa)
The system tables/views of the server itself (SYSCAT.TABLES, dbo.sysindexes, ALL_TABLES, information_schema.columns, etc.) are almost always plural. I guess for the sake of consistency I'd follow their lead.
I once used "Dude" for the User table - same short number of characters, no conflict with keywords, still a reference to a generic human. If I weren't concerned about the stuffy heads that might see the code, I would have kept it that way.
Singular. I'd call an array containing a bunch of user row representation objects 'users', but the table is 'the user table'. Thinking of the table as being nothing but the set of the rows it contains is wrong, IMO; the table is the metadata, and the set of rows is hierarchically attached to the table, it is not the table itself.
I use ORMs all the time, of course, and it helps that ORM code written with plural table names looks stupid.
While looking for good naming covention, the following confusion arises as should i name :
1) acc. to what the table holds eg: A table of users. Its always going to be plural. So, Users
2) acc. to what a record holds eg: A record in users tables will a single user. SO, User.
Now, the problem for users_roles majorly. case 1: acc. to first naming convention, users_roles What this name suggest, users and their roles.
case 2: acc. to second naming convention, user_role What this name suggest, user and his roles.
Good naming convention is to give a additional idea of Entity relationships, especially when many to many relationships are stored.
Here, as per the scenario, we should identify as sets of information.
In users table, all sets formed are unique user. In Roles table, all sets formed are unique roles. In user and roles relationship table, sets of users can be formed with different roles which gives an idea of 1-many relationships stored.
I would prefer,
Users table => user
Roles table => role
users role relationship table => user_roles
I am a fan of singular table names as they make my ER diagrams using CASE syntax easier to read, but by reading these responses I'm getting the feeling it never caught on very well? I personally love it. There is a good overview with examples of how readable your models can be when you use singular table names, add action verbs to your relationships and form good sentences for every relationships. It's all a bit of overkill for a 20 table database but if you have a DB with hundreds of tables and a complex design how will your developers ever understand it without a good readable diagram?
http://www.aisintl.com/case/method.html
As for prefixing tables and views I absolutely hate that practice. Give a person no information at all before giving them possibly bad information. Anyone browsing a db for objects can quite easily tell a table from a view, but if I have a table named tblUsers that for some reason I decide to restructure in the future into two tables, with a view unifying them to keep from breaking old code I now have a view named tblUsers. At this point I am left with two unappealing options, leave a view named with a tbl prefix which may confuse some developers, or force another layer, either middle tier or application to be rewritten to reference my new structure or name viewUsers. That negates a large part of the value of views IMHO.
How about this as a simple example:
SELECT Customer.Name, Customer.Address FROM Customer WHERE Customer.Name > "def"
vs.
SELECT Customers.Name, Customers.Address FROM Customers WHERE Customers.Name > "def"
The SQL in the latter is stranger sounding than the former.
I vote for singular.
I always use singular table names but, as already stated, the most important thing is to be consistent and use the same form for all names.
What I don't like about plural table names is that combined names can get quite strange. If for example you have a table named Users and you want to store properties for the user, this would result in a table named UsersProperties...
I personaly prefer to use plural names to represent a set, it just "sounds" better to my relational mind.
At this exact moment i am using singular names to define a data model for my company, because most of the people at work feel more confortable with it. Sometimes you just have to make life easier to everyone instead of imposing your personal preferences. (that's how i ended up in this thread, to get a confirmation on what should be the "best practice" for naming tables)
After reading all the arguing in this thread, i reached one conclusion:
I like my pancakes with honey, no matter what everybody's favorite flavour is. But if i am cooking for other people, i will try to serve them something they like.
We run similar standards, when scripting we demand [ ] around names, and where appropriate schema qualifiers - primarily it hedges your bets against future name grabs by the SQL syntax.
SELECT [Name] FROM [dbo].[Customer] WHERE [Location] = 'WA'
This has saved our souls in the past - some of our database systems have run 10+ years from SQL 6.0 through SQL 2005 - way past their intended lifespans.
If you go there will be trouble, but if you stay it will be double.
I'd much rather go against some supposed non-plurals naming convention than name my table after something which might be a reserved word.
I don't like plural table names because some nouns in English are not countable (water, soup, cash) or the meaning changes when you make it countable (chicken vs a chicken; meat vs bird). I also dislike using abbreviations for table name or column name because doing so adds extra slope to the already steep learning curve.
Ironically, I might make User an exception and call it Users because of USER (Transac-SQL), because I too don't like using brackets around tables if I don't have to.
I also like to name all the ID columns as Id, not ChickenId or ChickensId (what do plural guys do about this?).
All this is because I don't have proper respect for the database systems, I am just reapplying one-trick-pony knowledge from OO naming conventions like Java's out of habit and laziness. I wish there were better IDE support for complicated SQL.
I prefer to use the uninflected noun, which in English happens to be singular.
Inflecting the number of the table name causes orthographic problems (as many of the other answers show), but choosing to do so because tables usually contain multiple rows is also semantically full of holes. This is more obvious if we consider a language that inflects nouns based on case (as most do):
Since we're usually doing something with the rows, why not put the name in the accusative case? If we have a table that we write to more than we read, why not put the name in dative? It's a table of something, why not use the genitive? We wouldn't do this, because the table is defined as an abstract container that exists regardless of its state or usage. Inflecting the noun without a precise and absolute semantic reason is babbling.
Using the uninflected noun is simple, logical, regular and language-independent.
While looking for good naming covention, the following confusion arises as should i name :
1) acc. to what the table holds eg: A table of users. Its always going to be plural. So, Users
2) acc. to what a record holds eg: A record in users tables will a single user. SO, User.
Now, the problem for users_roles majorly. case 1: acc. to first naming convention, users_roles What this name suggest, users and their roles.
case 2: acc. to second naming convention, user_role What this name suggest, user and his roles.
Good naming convention is to give a additional idea of Entity relationships, especially when many to many relationships are stored.
Here, as per the scenario, we should identify as sets of information.
In users table, all sets formed are unique user. In Roles table, all sets formed are unique roles. In user and roles relationship table, sets of users can be formed with different roles which gives an idea of 1-many relationships stored.
I would prefer,
Users table => user
Roles table => role
users role relationship table => user_roles
A TABLE name is ONE definition of a table structure. A VIEW or QUERY name is ONE definition of a view or query of (a or many) tables. A TABLE, VIEW or QUERY may contain one of the following:
0 records 1 record Many records.
Why on earth would you want to put an 's' on the end of a single object name? What do you want to signify by placing this 's' on the end of an object name?
If you want to differentiate, then add '_tbl'. A View is '_vew' (not the silly '_v' convention).
Minimum 3 character suffixing - that stops this discussion dead.
A table is a DB object - no different to any other.
The saving of 3 characters saves nothing except clarity of meaning.
Red ;-)
The system tables/views of the server itself (SYSCAT.TABLES, dbo.sysindexes, ALL_TABLES, information_schema.columns, etc.) are almost always plural. I guess for the sake of consistency I'd follow their lead.
I will just give my opinion why I use singular names.
For example, I need to get all the fields from an user:
-- Select every fields from 'user' table
SELECT * FROM user
I need the name of the user that is 21 years old:
-- Select every fields from 'user' table which have 21 years old
SELECT * FROM user WHERE age = '21'
Of course the plural way can be used by the same means, but for my brain to read, I really think that's the right way to go.
This may be a bit redundant, but I would suggest being cautious. Not necessarily that it's a bad thing to rename tables, but standardization is just that; a standard -- this database may already be "standardized", however badly :) -- I would suggest consistency to be a better goal given that this database already exists and presumably it consists of more than just 2 tables.
Unless you can standardize the entire database, or at least are planning to work towards that end, I suspect that table names are just the tip of the iceberg and concentrating on the task at hand, enduring the pain of poorly named objects, may be in your best interest --
Practical consistency sometimes is the best standard... :)
my2cents ---
I solved the same problem by naming the table "Employee" (actually "Employees"). I try to stay as far away as possible from any conflict with possibly reserved words. Even "Users" is uncomfortably close for me.
I don't like plural table names because some nouns in English are not countable (water, soup, cash) or the meaning changes when you make it countable (chicken vs a chicken; meat vs bird). I also dislike using abbreviations for table name or column name because doing so adds extra slope to the already steep learning curve.
Ironically, I might make User an exception and call it Users because of USER (Transac-SQL), because I too don't like using brackets around tables if I don't have to.
I also like to name all the ID columns as Id, not ChickenId or ChickensId (what do plural guys do about this?).
All this is because I don't have proper respect for the database systems, I am just reapplying one-trick-pony knowledge from OO naming conventions like Java's out of habit and laziness. I wish there were better IDE support for complicated SQL.
I stick with singular for table names and any programming entity.
The reason? The fact that there are irregular plurals in English like mouse ? mice and sheep ? sheep. Then, if I need a collection, i just use mouses or sheeps, and move on.
It really helps the plurality stand out, and I can easily and programatically determine what the collection of things would look like.
So, my rule is: everything is singular, every collection of things is singular with an s appended. Helps with ORMs too.
If you use Object Relational Mapping tools or will in the future I suggest Singular.
Some tools like LLBLGen can automatically correct plural names like Users to User without changing the table name itself. Why does this matter? Because when it's mapped you want it to look like User.Name instead of Users.Name or worse from some of my old databases tables naming tblUsers.strName which is just confusing in code.
My new rule of thumb is to judge how it will look once it's been converted into an object.
one table I've found that does not fit the new naming I use is UsersInRoles. But there will always be those few exceptions and even in this case it looks fine as UsersInRoles.Username.
As others have mentioned here, conventions should be a tool for adding to the ease of use and readability. Not as a shackle or a club to torture developers.
That said, my personal preference is to use singular names for both tables and columns. This probably comes from my programming background. Class names are generally singular unless they are some sort of collection. In my mind I am storing or reading individual records in the table in question, so singular makes sense to me.
This practice also allows me to reserve plural table names for those that store many-to-many relationships between my objects.
I try to avoid reserved words in my table and column names, as well. In the case in question here it makes more sense to go counter to the singular convention for Users to avoid the need to encapsulate a table that uses the reserved word of User.
I like using prefixes in a limited manner (tbl for table names, sp_ for proc names, etc), though many believe this adds clutter. I also prefer CamelBack names to underscores because I always end up hitting the + instead of _ when typing the name. Many others disagree.
Here is another good link for naming convention guidelines: http://www.xaprb.com/blog/2008/10/26/the-power-of-a-good-sql-naming-convention/
Remember that the most important factor in your convention is that it make sense to the people interacting with the database in question. There is no "One Ring to Rule Them All" when it comes to naming conventions.
I personaly prefer to use plural names to represent a set, it just "sounds" better to my relational mind.
At this exact moment i am using singular names to define a data model for my company, because most of the people at work feel more confortable with it. Sometimes you just have to make life easier to everyone instead of imposing your personal preferences. (that's how i ended up in this thread, to get a confirmation on what should be the "best practice" for naming tables)
After reading all the arguing in this thread, i reached one conclusion:
I like my pancakes with honey, no matter what everybody's favorite flavour is. But if i am cooking for other people, i will try to serve them something they like.
I did not see this clearly articulated in any of the previous answers. Many programmers have no formal definition in mind when working with tables. We often communicate intuitively in terms of of "records" or "rows". However, with some exceptions for denormalized relations, tables are usually designed so that the relation between the non-key attributes and the key constitutes a set theoretic function.
A function can be defined as a subset of a cross-product between two sets, in which each element of the set of keys occurs at most once in the mapping. Hence the terminology arising from from that perspective tends to be singular. One sees the same singular (or at least, non-plural) convention across other mathematical and computational theories involving functions (algebra and lambda calculus for instance).
There is no "convention" that requires table names to be singular.
For example, we had a table called "REJECTS" on a db used by a rating process, containing the records rejected from one run of the program, and I don't see any reason in not using plural for that table (naming it "REJECT" would have been just funny, or too optimistic).
About the other problem (quotes) it depends on the SQL dialect. Oracle doesn't require quotes around table names.
This may be a bit redundant, but I would suggest being cautious. Not necessarily that it's a bad thing to rename tables, but standardization is just that; a standard -- this database may already be "standardized", however badly :) -- I would suggest consistency to be a better goal given that this database already exists and presumably it consists of more than just 2 tables.
Unless you can standardize the entire database, or at least are planning to work towards that end, I suspect that table names are just the tip of the iceberg and concentrating on the task at hand, enduring the pain of poorly named objects, may be in your best interest --
Practical consistency sometimes is the best standard... :)
my2cents ---
I solved the same problem by naming the table "Employee" (actually "Employees"). I try to stay as far away as possible from any conflict with possibly reserved words. Even "Users" is uncomfortably close for me.
I think using the singular is what we were taught in university. But at the same time you could argue that unlike in object oriented programming, a table is not an instance of its records.
I think I'm tipping in favour of the singular at the moment because of plural irregularities in English. In German it's even worse due to no consistent plural forms - sometimes you cannot tell if a word is plural or not without the specifying article in front of it (der/die/das). And in Chinese languages there are no plural forms anyway.
Guidelines are really there as just that. It's not "set in stone" that's why you have the option of being able to ignore them.
I would say that it's more logically intuitive to have pluralized table names. A table is a collection of entity after all. In addition to other alternatives mentioned I commonly see prefixes on table names...
I'm not suggesting this is the way to go, I also see spaces used a LOT in table names which I abhor. I've even come across field names with idiotic characters like ? as if to say this field answers a question.
The system tables/views of the server itself (SYSCAT.TABLES, dbo.sysindexes, ALL_TABLES, information_schema.columns, etc.) are almost always plural. I guess for the sake of consistency I'd follow their lead.
I've always used singular simply because that's what I was taught. However, while creating a new schema recently, for the first time in a long time, I actively decided to maintain this convention simply because... it's shorter. Adding an 's' to the end of every table name seems as useless to me as adding 'tbl_' in front of every one.
Tables: plural
Multiple users are listed in the users table.
Models: singular
A singular user can be selected from the users table.
Controllers: plural
http://myapp.com/users would list multiple users.
That's my take on it anyway.
I also would go with plurals, and with the aforementioned Users dilemma, we do take the square bracketing approach.
We do this to provide uniformity between both database architecture and application architecture, with the underlying understanding that the Users table is a collection of User values as much as a Users collection in a code artifact is a collection of User objects.
Having our data team and our developers speaking the same conceptual language (although not always the same object names) makes it easier to convey ideas between them.
If you go there will be trouble, but if you stay it will be double.
I'd much rather go against some supposed non-plurals naming convention than name my table after something which might be a reserved word.
As others have mentioned here, conventions should be a tool for adding to the ease of use and readability. Not as a shackle or a club to torture developers.
That said, my personal preference is to use singular names for both tables and columns. This probably comes from my programming background. Class names are generally singular unless they are some sort of collection. In my mind I am storing or reading individual records in the table in question, so singular makes sense to me.
This practice also allows me to reserve plural table names for those that store many-to-many relationships between my objects.
I try to avoid reserved words in my table and column names, as well. In the case in question here it makes more sense to go counter to the singular convention for Users to avoid the need to encapsulate a table that uses the reserved word of User.
I like using prefixes in a limited manner (tbl for table names, sp_ for proc names, etc), though many believe this adds clutter. I also prefer CamelBack names to underscores because I always end up hitting the + instead of _ when typing the name. Many others disagree.
Here is another good link for naming convention guidelines: http://www.xaprb.com/blog/2008/10/26/the-power-of-a-good-sql-naming-convention/
Remember that the most important factor in your convention is that it make sense to the people interacting with the database in question. There is no "One Ring to Rule Them All" when it comes to naming conventions.
Singular. I don't buy any argument involving which is most logical - every person thinks his own preference is most logical. No matter what you do it is a mess, just pick a convention and stick to it. We are trying to map a language with highly irregular grammar and semantics (normal spoken and written language) to a highly regular (SQL) grammar with very specific semantics.
My main argument is that I don't think of the tables as a set but as relations.
So, the AppUser relation tells which entities are AppUsers.
The AppUserGroup relation tells me which entities are AppUserGroups
The AppUser_AppUserGroup relation tells me how the AppUsers and AppUserGroups are related.
The AppUserGroup_AppUserGroup relation tells me how AppUserGroups and AppUserGroups are related (i.e. groups member of groups).
In other words, when I think about entities and how they are related I think of relations in singular, but of course, when I think of the entities in collections or sets, the collections or sets are plural.
In my code, then, and in the database schema, I use singular. In textual descriptions, I end up using plural for increased readability - then use fonts etc. to distinguish the table/relation name from the plural s.
I like to think of it as messy, but systematic - and this way there is always a systematically generated name for the relation I wish to express, which to me is very important.
Singular. I'd call an array containing a bunch of user row representation objects 'users', but the table is 'the user table'. Thinking of the table as being nothing but the set of the rows it contains is wrong, IMO; the table is the metadata, and the set of rows is hierarchically attached to the table, it is not the table itself.
I use ORMs all the time, of course, and it helps that ORM code written with plural table names looks stupid.
I also would go with plurals, and with the aforementioned Users dilemma, we do take the square bracketing approach.
We do this to provide uniformity between both database architecture and application architecture, with the underlying understanding that the Users table is a collection of User values as much as a Users collection in a code artifact is a collection of User objects.
Having our data team and our developers speaking the same conceptual language (although not always the same object names) makes it easier to convey ideas between them.
I've actually always thought it was popular convention to use plural table names. Up until this point I've always used plural.
I can understand the argument for singular table names, but to me plural makes more sense. A table name usually describes what the table contains. In a normalized database, each table contains specific sets of data. Each row is an entity and the table contains many entities. Thus the plural form for the table name.
A table of cars would have the name cars and each row is a car. I'll admit that specifying the table along with the field in a table.field manner is the best practice and that having singular table names is more readable. However in the following two examples, the former makes more sense:
SELECT * FROM cars WHERE color='blue'
SELECT * FROM car WHERE color='blue'
Honestly, I will be rethinking my position on the matter, and I would rely on the actual conventions used by the organization I'm developing for. However, I think for my personal conventions, I'll stick with plural table names. To me it makes more sense.
Guidelines are really there as just that. It's not "set in stone" that's why you have the option of being able to ignore them.
I would say that it's more logically intuitive to have pluralized table names. A table is a collection of entity after all. In addition to other alternatives mentioned I commonly see prefixes on table names...
I'm not suggesting this is the way to go, I also see spaces used a LOT in table names which I abhor. I've even come across field names with idiotic characters like ? as if to say this field answers a question.
What convention requires that tables have singular names? I always thought it was plural names.
A user is added to the Users table.
This site agrees:
http://vyaskn.tripod.com/object_naming.htm#Tables
This site disagrees (but I disagree with it):
http://justinsomnia.org/writings/naming_conventions.html
As others have mentioned: these are just guidelines. Pick a convention that works for you and your company/project and stick with it. Switching between singular and plural or sometimes abbreviating words and sometimes not is much more aggravating.
Possible alternatives:
IMO using brackets is technically the safest approach, though it is a bit cumbersome. IMO it's 6 of one, half-a-dozen of the other, and your solution really just boils down to personal/team preference.
I stick with singular for table names and any programming entity.
The reason? The fact that there are irregular plurals in English like mouse ? mice and sheep ? sheep. Then, if I need a collection, i just use mouses or sheeps, and move on.
It really helps the plurality stand out, and I can easily and programatically determine what the collection of things would look like.
So, my rule is: everything is singular, every collection of things is singular with an s appended. Helps with ORMs too.
As others have mentioned here, conventions should be a tool for adding to the ease of use and readability. Not as a shackle or a club to torture developers.
That said, my personal preference is to use singular names for both tables and columns. This probably comes from my programming background. Class names are generally singular unless they are some sort of collection. In my mind I am storing or reading individual records in the table in question, so singular makes sense to me.
This practice also allows me to reserve plural table names for those that store many-to-many relationships between my objects.
I try to avoid reserved words in my table and column names, as well. In the case in question here it makes more sense to go counter to the singular convention for Users to avoid the need to encapsulate a table that uses the reserved word of User.
I like using prefixes in a limited manner (tbl for table names, sp_ for proc names, etc), though many believe this adds clutter. I also prefer CamelBack names to underscores because I always end up hitting the + instead of _ when typing the name. Many others disagree.
Here is another good link for naming convention guidelines: http://www.xaprb.com/blog/2008/10/26/the-power-of-a-good-sql-naming-convention/
Remember that the most important factor in your convention is that it make sense to the people interacting with the database in question. There is no "One Ring to Rule Them All" when it comes to naming conventions.
Guidelines are really there as just that. It's not "set in stone" that's why you have the option of being able to ignore them.
I would say that it's more logically intuitive to have pluralized table names. A table is a collection of entity after all. In addition to other alternatives mentioned I commonly see prefixes on table names...
I'm not suggesting this is the way to go, I also see spaces used a LOT in table names which I abhor. I've even come across field names with idiotic characters like ? as if to say this field answers a question.
My take is in semantics depending on how you define your container. For example, A "bag of apples" or simply "apples" or an "apple bag" or "apple".
Example: a "college" table can contain 0 or more colleges a table of "colleges" can contain 0 or more collegues
a "student" table can contain 0 or more students
a table of "students" can contain 0 or more students.
My conclusion is that either is fine but you have to define how you (or people interacting with it) are going to approach when referring to the tables; "a x table" or a "table of xs"
Singular. I'd call an array containing a bunch of user row representation objects 'users', but the table is 'the user table'. Thinking of the table as being nothing but the set of the rows it contains is wrong, IMO; the table is the metadata, and the set of rows is hierarchically attached to the table, it is not the table itself.
I use ORMs all the time, of course, and it helps that ORM code written with plural table names looks stupid.
What convention requires that tables have singular names? I always thought it was plural names.
A user is added to the Users table.
This site agrees:
http://vyaskn.tripod.com/object_naming.htm#Tables
This site disagrees (but I disagree with it):
http://justinsomnia.org/writings/naming_conventions.html
As others have mentioned: these are just guidelines. Pick a convention that works for you and your company/project and stick with it. Switching between singular and plural or sometimes abbreviating words and sometimes not is much more aggravating.
I am a fan of singular table names as they make my ER diagrams using CASE syntax easier to read, but by reading these responses I'm getting the feeling it never caught on very well? I personally love it. There is a good overview with examples of how readable your models can be when you use singular table names, add action verbs to your relationships and form good sentences for every relationships. It's all a bit of overkill for a 20 table database but if you have a DB with hundreds of tables and a complex design how will your developers ever understand it without a good readable diagram?
http://www.aisintl.com/case/method.html
As for prefixing tables and views I absolutely hate that practice. Give a person no information at all before giving them possibly bad information. Anyone browsing a db for objects can quite easily tell a table from a view, but if I have a table named tblUsers that for some reason I decide to restructure in the future into two tables, with a view unifying them to keep from breaking old code I now have a view named tblUsers. At this point I am left with two unappealing options, leave a view named with a tbl prefix which may confuse some developers, or force another layer, either middle tier or application to be rewritten to reference my new structure or name viewUsers. That negates a large part of the value of views IMHO.
I only use nouns for my table names that are spelled the same, whether singular or plural:
moose fish deer aircraft you pants shorts eyeglasses scissors species offspring
If you use certain frameworks like Zend Framework (PHP) it is only wise to use plural for table classes and singular for row classes.
So say you create a table object $users = new Users() and have declared the row class to be User you will be able to call new User() as well.
Now if you use singular for table names you would have to do something like new UserTable() with the row being new UserRow(). This looks more clumsy to me than just having an object Users() for the table and User() objects for the rows.
If we look at MS SQL Server's system tables, their names as assigned by Microsoft are in plural.
The Oracle's system tables are named in singular. Although a few of them are plural.
Oracle recommends plural for user-defined table names.
That doesn't make much sense that they recommend one thing and follow another.
That the architects at these two software giants have named their tables using different conventions, doesn't make much sense either... After all, what are these guys ... PhD's?
I do remember in academia, the recommendation was singular.
For example, when we say:
select OrderHeader.ID FROM OrderHeader WHERE OrderHeader.Reference = 'ABC123'
maybe b/c each ID is selected from a particular single row ...?
There are different papers on both sites, I think that you only need to choose your side. Personally I prefer Plurar for tables naming, and of course singular for column naming.
I like how you can read this:
SELECT CustomerName FROM Customers WHERE CustomerID = 100;
Really we have OOP, and is great, but most people keep using Relational Databases, no Object Databases. There is no need to follow the OOP concepts for Relational Databases.
Another example, you have a table Teams, that keep TeamID, TeamColor but also PlayerID, and will have same teamID and TeamColor for certain amount of PlayerID...
To Which team the player belongs?
SELECT * FROM Teams WHERE PlayerID = X
All Players from X Team?
SELECT * FROM Players INNER JOIN Teams ON Players.PlayerID = Teams.PlayerID WHERE Teams.TeamID = X
All this sound good to you?
Anyways, also take a look to naming conventions used by W3Schools:
I don't like plural table names because some nouns in English are not countable (water, soup, cash) or the meaning changes when you make it countable (chicken vs a chicken; meat vs bird). I also dislike using abbreviations for table name or column name because doing so adds extra slope to the already steep learning curve.
Ironically, I might make User an exception and call it Users because of USER (Transac-SQL), because I too don't like using brackets around tables if I don't have to.
I also like to name all the ID columns as Id, not ChickenId or ChickensId (what do plural guys do about this?).
All this is because I don't have proper respect for the database systems, I am just reapplying one-trick-pony knowledge from OO naming conventions like Java's out of habit and laziness. I wish there were better IDE support for complicated SQL.
I stick with singular for table names and any programming entity.
The reason? The fact that there are irregular plurals in English like mouse ? mice and sheep ? sheep. Then, if I need a collection, i just use mouses or sheeps, and move on.
It really helps the plurality stand out, and I can easily and programatically determine what the collection of things would look like.
So, my rule is: everything is singular, every collection of things is singular with an s appended. Helps with ORMs too.
I am of the firm belief that in an Entity Relation Diagram, the entity should be reflected with a singular name, similar to a class name being singular. Once instantiated, the name reflects its instance. So with databases, the entity when made into a table (a collection of entities or records) is plural. Entity, User is made into table Users. I would agree with others who suggested maybe the name User could be improved to Employee or something more applicable to your scenario.
This then makes more sense in a SQL statement because you are selecting from a group of records and if the table name is singular, it doesn't read well.
We run similar standards, when scripting we demand [ ] around names, and where appropriate schema qualifiers - primarily it hedges your bets against future name grabs by the SQL syntax.
SELECT [Name] FROM [dbo].[Customer] WHERE [Location] = 'WA'
This has saved our souls in the past - some of our database systems have run 10+ years from SQL 6.0 through SQL 2005 - way past their intended lifespans.
If you go there will be trouble, but if you stay it will be double.
I'd much rather go against some supposed non-plurals naming convention than name my table after something which might be a reserved word.
I prefer to use the uninflected noun, which in English happens to be singular.
Inflecting the number of the table name causes orthographic problems (as many of the other answers show), but choosing to do so because tables usually contain multiple rows is also semantically full of holes. This is more obvious if we consider a language that inflects nouns based on case (as most do):
Since we're usually doing something with the rows, why not put the name in the accusative case? If we have a table that we write to more than we read, why not put the name in dative? It's a table of something, why not use the genitive? We wouldn't do this, because the table is defined as an abstract container that exists regardless of its state or usage. Inflecting the noun without a precise and absolute semantic reason is babbling.
Using the uninflected noun is simple, logical, regular and language-independent.
The system tables/views of the server itself (SYSCAT.TABLES, dbo.sysindexes, ALL_TABLES, information_schema.columns, etc.) are almost always plural. I guess for the sake of consistency I'd follow their lead.
Singular. I'd call an array containing a bunch of user row representation objects 'users', but the table is 'the user table'. Thinking of the table as being nothing but the set of the rows it contains is wrong, IMO; the table is the metadata, and the set of rows is hierarchically attached to the table, it is not the table itself.
I use ORMs all the time, of course, and it helps that ORM code written with plural table names looks stupid.
Tables: plural
Multiple users are listed in the users table.
Models: singular
A singular user can be selected from the users table.
Controllers: plural
http://myapp.com/users would list multiple users.
That's my take on it anyway.
I am of the firm belief that in an Entity Relation Diagram, the entity should be reflected with a singular name, similar to a class name being singular. Once instantiated, the name reflects its instance. So with databases, the entity when made into a table (a collection of entities or records) is plural. Entity, User is made into table Users. I would agree with others who suggested maybe the name User could be improved to Employee or something more applicable to your scenario.
This then makes more sense in a SQL statement because you are selecting from a group of records and if the table name is singular, it doesn't read well.
There is no "convention" that requires table names to be singular.
For example, we had a table called "REJECTS" on a db used by a rating process, containing the records rejected from one run of the program, and I don't see any reason in not using plural for that table (naming it "REJECT" would have been just funny, or too optimistic).
About the other problem (quotes) it depends on the SQL dialect. Oracle doesn't require quotes around table names.
I think using the singular is what we were taught in university. But at the same time you could argue that unlike in object oriented programming, a table is not an instance of its records.
I think I'm tipping in favour of the singular at the moment because of plural irregularities in English. In German it's even worse due to no consistent plural forms - sometimes you cannot tell if a word is plural or not without the specifying article in front of it (der/die/das). And in Chinese languages there are no plural forms anyway.
The SQL definition of a table is in actuality the definition of one potential row of the table, not the collection. Therefore, the name used in that definition must designate the type of the row, not the name of the collection. People who prefer plural because it reads well in their English statements need to start thinking more logically and look at all of the logic and programming code that is involved with actually using a table. There are several very good reasons mentioned in these comments to use singular table names. These include very good reasons NOT to use plural table names. "Reading well" should not be any reason at all, especially since some may read the idea differently.
Singular. I don't buy any argument involving which is most logical - every person thinks his own preference is most logical. No matter what you do it is a mess, just pick a convention and stick to it. We are trying to map a language with highly irregular grammar and semantics (normal spoken and written language) to a highly regular (SQL) grammar with very specific semantics.
My main argument is that I don't think of the tables as a set but as relations.
So, the AppUser relation tells which entities are AppUsers.
The AppUserGroup relation tells me which entities are AppUserGroups
The AppUser_AppUserGroup relation tells me how the AppUsers and AppUserGroups are related.
The AppUserGroup_AppUserGroup relation tells me how AppUserGroups and AppUserGroups are related (i.e. groups member of groups).
In other words, when I think about entities and how they are related I think of relations in singular, but of course, when I think of the entities in collections or sets, the collections or sets are plural.
In my code, then, and in the database schema, I use singular. In textual descriptions, I end up using plural for increased readability - then use fonts etc. to distinguish the table/relation name from the plural s.
I like to think of it as messy, but systematic - and this way there is always a systematically generated name for the relation I wish to express, which to me is very important.
I don't like plural table names because some nouns in English are not countable (water, soup, cash) or the meaning changes when you make it countable (chicken vs a chicken; meat vs bird). I also dislike using abbreviations for table name or column name because doing so adds extra slope to the already steep learning curve.
Ironically, I might make User an exception and call it Users because of USER (Transac-SQL), because I too don't like using brackets around tables if I don't have to.
I also like to name all the ID columns as Id, not ChickenId or ChickensId (what do plural guys do about this?).
All this is because I don't have proper respect for the database systems, I am just reapplying one-trick-pony knowledge from OO naming conventions like Java's out of habit and laziness. I wish there were better IDE support for complicated SQL.
I always thought that was a dumb convention. I use plural table names.
(I believe the rational behind that policy is that it make it easier for ORM code generators to produce object & collection classes, since it is easier to produce a plural name from a singular name than vice-versa)
I am a fan of singular table names as they make my ER diagrams using CASE syntax easier to read, but by reading these responses I'm getting the feeling it never caught on very well? I personally love it. There is a good overview with examples of how readable your models can be when you use singular table names, add action verbs to your relationships and form good sentences for every relationships. It's all a bit of overkill for a 20 table database but if you have a DB with hundreds of tables and a complex design how will your developers ever understand it without a good readable diagram?
http://www.aisintl.com/case/method.html
As for prefixing tables and views I absolutely hate that practice. Give a person no information at all before giving them possibly bad information. Anyone browsing a db for objects can quite easily tell a table from a view, but if I have a table named tblUsers that for some reason I decide to restructure in the future into two tables, with a view unifying them to keep from breaking old code I now have a view named tblUsers. At this point I am left with two unappealing options, leave a view named with a tbl prefix which may confuse some developers, or force another layer, either middle tier or application to be rewritten to reference my new structure or name viewUsers. That negates a large part of the value of views IMHO.
I've actually always thought it was popular convention to use plural table names. Up until this point I've always used plural.
I can understand the argument for singular table names, but to me plural makes more sense. A table name usually describes what the table contains. In a normalized database, each table contains specific sets of data. Each row is an entity and the table contains many entities. Thus the plural form for the table name.
A table of cars would have the name cars and each row is a car. I'll admit that specifying the table along with the field in a table.field manner is the best practice and that having singular table names is more readable. However in the following two examples, the former makes more sense:
SELECT * FROM cars WHERE color='blue'
SELECT * FROM car WHERE color='blue'
Honestly, I will be rethinking my position on the matter, and I would rely on the actual conventions used by the organization I'm developing for. However, I think for my personal conventions, I'll stick with plural table names. To me it makes more sense.
If you use certain frameworks like Zend Framework (PHP) it is only wise to use plural for table classes and singular for row classes.
So say you create a table object $users = new Users() and have declared the row class to be User you will be able to call new User() as well.
Now if you use singular for table names you would have to do something like new UserTable() with the row being new UserRow(). This looks more clumsy to me than just having an object Users() for the table and User() objects for the rows.
My take is in semantics depending on how you define your container. For example, A "bag of apples" or simply "apples" or an "apple bag" or "apple".
Example: a "college" table can contain 0 or more colleges a table of "colleges" can contain 0 or more collegues
a "student" table can contain 0 or more students
a table of "students" can contain 0 or more students.
My conclusion is that either is fine but you have to define how you (or people interacting with it) are going to approach when referring to the tables; "a x table" or a "table of xs"
We run similar standards, when scripting we demand [ ] around names, and where appropriate schema qualifiers - primarily it hedges your bets against future name grabs by the SQL syntax.
SELECT [Name] FROM [dbo].[Customer] WHERE [Location] = 'WA'
This has saved our souls in the past - some of our database systems have run 10+ years from SQL 6.0 through SQL 2005 - way past their intended lifespans.
I will just give my opinion why I use singular names.
For example, I need to get all the fields from an user:
-- Select every fields from 'user' table
SELECT * FROM user
I need the name of the user that is 21 years old:
-- Select every fields from 'user' table which have 21 years old
SELECT * FROM user WHERE age = '21'
Of course the plural way can be used by the same means, but for my brain to read, I really think that's the right way to go.
There are different papers on both sites, I think that you only need to choose your side. Personally I prefer Plurar for tables naming, and of course singular for column naming.
I like how you can read this:
SELECT CustomerName FROM Customers WHERE CustomerID = 100;
Really we have OOP, and is great, but most people keep using Relational Databases, no Object Databases. There is no need to follow the OOP concepts for Relational Databases.
Another example, you have a table Teams, that keep TeamID, TeamColor but also PlayerID, and will have same teamID and TeamColor for certain amount of PlayerID...
To Which team the player belongs?
SELECT * FROM Teams WHERE PlayerID = X
All Players from X Team?
SELECT * FROM Players INNER JOIN Teams ON Players.PlayerID = Teams.PlayerID WHERE Teams.TeamID = X
All this sound good to you?
Anyways, also take a look to naming conventions used by W3Schools:
I am of the firm belief that in an Entity Relation Diagram, the entity should be reflected with a singular name, similar to a class name being singular. Once instantiated, the name reflects its instance. So with databases, the entity when made into a table (a collection of entities or records) is plural. Entity, User is made into table Users. I would agree with others who suggested maybe the name User could be improved to Employee or something more applicable to your scenario.
This then makes more sense in a SQL statement because you are selecting from a group of records and if the table name is singular, it doesn't read well.
I once used "Dude" for the User table - same short number of characters, no conflict with keywords, still a reference to a generic human. If I weren't concerned about the stuffy heads that might see the code, I would have kept it that way.
A TABLE name is ONE definition of a table structure. A VIEW or QUERY name is ONE definition of a view or query of (a or many) tables. A TABLE, VIEW or QUERY may contain one of the following:
0 records 1 record Many records.
Why on earth would you want to put an 's' on the end of a single object name? What do you want to signify by placing this 's' on the end of an object name?
If you want to differentiate, then add '_tbl'. A View is '_vew' (not the silly '_v' convention).
Minimum 3 character suffixing - that stops this discussion dead.
A table is a DB object - no different to any other.
The saving of 3 characters saves nothing except clarity of meaning.
Red ;-)
I will just give my opinion why I use singular names.
For example, I need to get all the fields from an user:
-- Select every fields from 'user' table
SELECT * FROM user
I need the name of the user that is 21 years old:
-- Select every fields from 'user' table which have 21 years old
SELECT * FROM user WHERE age = '21'
Of course the plural way can be used by the same means, but for my brain to read, I really think that's the right way to go.
What convention requires that tables have singular names? I always thought it was plural names.
A user is added to the Users table.
This site agrees:
http://vyaskn.tripod.com/object_naming.htm#Tables
This site disagrees (but I disagree with it):
http://justinsomnia.org/writings/naming_conventions.html
As others have mentioned: these are just guidelines. Pick a convention that works for you and your company/project and stick with it. Switching between singular and plural or sometimes abbreviating words and sometimes not is much more aggravating.
Possible alternatives:
IMO using brackets is technically the safest approach, though it is a bit cumbersome. IMO it's 6 of one, half-a-dozen of the other, and your solution really just boils down to personal/team preference.
What convention requires that tables have singular names? I always thought it was plural names.
A user is added to the Users table.
This site agrees:
http://vyaskn.tripod.com/object_naming.htm#Tables
This site disagrees (but I disagree with it):
http://justinsomnia.org/writings/naming_conventions.html
As others have mentioned: these are just guidelines. Pick a convention that works for you and your company/project and stick with it. Switching between singular and plural or sometimes abbreviating words and sometimes not is much more aggravating.
If we look at MS SQL Server's system tables, their names as assigned by Microsoft are in plural.
The Oracle's system tables are named in singular. Although a few of them are plural.
Oracle recommends plural for user-defined table names.
That doesn't make much sense that they recommend one thing and follow another.
That the architects at these two software giants have named their tables using different conventions, doesn't make much sense either... After all, what are these guys ... PhD's?
I do remember in academia, the recommendation was singular.
For example, when we say:
select OrderHeader.ID FROM OrderHeader WHERE OrderHeader.Reference = 'ABC123'
maybe b/c each ID is selected from a particular single row ...?
There is no "convention" that requires table names to be singular.
For example, we had a table called "REJECTS" on a db used by a rating process, containing the records rejected from one run of the program, and I don't see any reason in not using plural for that table (naming it "REJECT" would have been just funny, or too optimistic).
About the other problem (quotes) it depends on the SQL dialect. Oracle doesn't require quotes around table names.
I will just give my opinion why I use singular names.
For example, I need to get all the fields from an user:
-- Select every fields from 'user' table
SELECT * FROM user
I need the name of the user that is 21 years old:
-- Select every fields from 'user' table which have 21 years old
SELECT * FROM user WHERE age = '21'
Of course the plural way can be used by the same means, but for my brain to read, I really think that's the right way to go.
If you use Object Relational Mapping tools or will in the future I suggest Singular.
Some tools like LLBLGen can automatically correct plural names like Users to User without changing the table name itself. Why does this matter? Because when it's mapped you want it to look like User.Name instead of Users.Name or worse from some of my old databases tables naming tblUsers.strName which is just confusing in code.
My new rule of thumb is to judge how it will look once it's been converted into an object.
one table I've found that does not fit the new naming I use is UsersInRoles. But there will always be those few exceptions and even in this case it looks fine as UsersInRoles.Username.
I stick with singular for table names and any programming entity.
The reason? The fact that there are irregular plurals in English like mouse ? mice and sheep ? sheep. Then, if I need a collection, i just use mouses or sheeps, and move on.
It really helps the plurality stand out, and I can easily and programatically determine what the collection of things would look like.
So, my rule is: everything is singular, every collection of things is singular with an s appended. Helps with ORMs too.
I solved the same problem by naming the table "Employee" (actually "Employees"). I try to stay as far away as possible from any conflict with possibly reserved words. Even "Users" is uncomfortably close for me.
We run similar standards, when scripting we demand [ ] around names, and where appropriate schema qualifiers - primarily it hedges your bets against future name grabs by the SQL syntax.
SELECT [Name] FROM [dbo].[Customer] WHERE [Location] = 'WA'
This has saved our souls in the past - some of our database systems have run 10+ years from SQL 6.0 through SQL 2005 - way past their intended lifespans.
I solved the same problem by naming the table "Employee" (actually "Employees"). I try to stay as far away as possible from any conflict with possibly reserved words. Even "Users" is uncomfortably close for me.
I had same question, and after reading all answers here I definitely stay with SINGULAR, reasons:
Reason 1 (Concept). You can think of bag containing apples like "AppleBag", it doesn't matter if contains 0, 1 or a million apples, it is always the same bag. Tables are just that, containers, the table name must describe what it contains, not how much data it contains. Additionally, the plural concept is more about a spoken language one (actually to determine whether there is one or more).
Reason 2. (Convenience). it is easier come out with singular names, than with plural ones. Objects can have irregular plurals or not plural at all, but will always have a singular one (with few exceptions like News).
Reason 3. (Aesthetic and Order). Specially in master-detail scenarios, this reads better, aligns better by name, and have more logical order (Master first, Detail second):
Compared to:
Reason 4 (Simplicity). Put all together, Table Names, Primary Keys, Relationships, Entity Classes... is better to be aware of only one name (singular) instead of two (singular class, plural table, singular field, singular-plural master-detail...)
CustomerCustomer.CustomerIDCustomerAddresspublic Class Customer {...}SELECT FROM Customer WHERE CustomerID = 100Once you know you are dealing with "Customer", you can be sure you will use the same word for all of your database interaction needs.
Reason 5. (Globalization). The world is getting smaller, you may have a team of different nationalities, not everybody has English as a native language. It would be easier for a non-native English language programmer to think of "Repository" than of "Repositories", or "Status" instead of "Statuses". Having singular names can lead to fewer errors caused by typos, save time by not having to think "is it Child or Children?", hence improving productivity.
Reason 6. (Why not?). It can even save you writing time, save you disk space, and even make your computer keyboard last longer!
SELECT Customer.CustomerName FROM Customer WHERE Customer.CustomerID = 100SELECT Customers.CustomerName FROM Customers WHERE Customers.CustomerID = 100You have saved 3 letters, 3 bytes, 3 extra keyboard hits :)
And finally, you can name those ones messing up with reserved names like:
Or use the infamous square brackets [User]
I've always used singular simply because that's what I was taught. However, while creating a new schema recently, for the first time in a long time, I actively decided to maintain this convention simply because... it's shorter. Adding an 's' to the end of every table name seems as useless to me as adding 'tbl_' in front of every one.
If you use Object Relational Mapping tools or will in the future I suggest Singular.
Some tools like LLBLGen can automatically correct plural names like Users to User without changing the table name itself. Why does this matter? Because when it's mapped you want it to look like User.Name instead of Users.Name or worse from some of my old databases tables naming tblUsers.strName which is just confusing in code.
My new rule of thumb is to judge how it will look once it's been converted into an object.
one table I've found that does not fit the new naming I use is UsersInRoles. But there will always be those few exceptions and even in this case it looks fine as UsersInRoles.Username.
Possible alternatives:
IMO using brackets is technically the safest approach, though it is a bit cumbersome. IMO it's 6 of one, half-a-dozen of the other, and your solution really just boils down to personal/team preference.
If you use certain frameworks like Zend Framework (PHP) it is only wise to use plural for table classes and singular for row classes.
So say you create a table object $users = new Users() and have declared the row class to be User you will be able to call new User() as well.
Now if you use singular for table names you would have to do something like new UserTable() with the row being new UserRow(). This looks more clumsy to me than just having an object Users() for the table and User() objects for the rows.
How about this as a simple example:
SELECT Customer.Name, Customer.Address FROM Customer WHERE Customer.Name > "def"
vs.
SELECT Customers.Name, Customers.Address FROM Customers WHERE Customers.Name > "def"
The SQL in the latter is stranger sounding than the former.
I vote for singular.
There is no "convention" that requires table names to be singular.
For example, we had a table called "REJECTS" on a db used by a rating process, containing the records rejected from one run of the program, and I don't see any reason in not using plural for that table (naming it "REJECT" would have been just funny, or too optimistic).
About the other problem (quotes) it depends on the SQL dialect. Oracle doesn't require quotes around table names.
I also would go with plurals, and with the aforementioned Users dilemma, we do take the square bracketing approach.
We do this to provide uniformity between both database architecture and application architecture, with the underlying understanding that the Users table is a collection of User values as much as a Users collection in a code artifact is a collection of User objects.
Having our data team and our developers speaking the same conceptual language (although not always the same object names) makes it easier to convey ideas between them.
IMHO, table names should be plural like Customers.
Class names should be singular like Customer if it maps to a row in the Customers table.
I only use nouns for my table names that are spelled the same, whether singular or plural:
moose fish deer aircraft you pants shorts eyeglasses scissors species offspring
I did not see this clearly articulated in any of the previous answers. Many programmers have no formal definition in mind when working with tables. We often communicate intuitively in terms of of "records" or "rows". However, with some exceptions for denormalized relations, tables are usually designed so that the relation between the non-key attributes and the key constitutes a set theoretic function.
A function can be defined as a subset of a cross-product between two sets, in which each element of the set of keys occurs at most once in the mapping. Hence the terminology arising from from that perspective tends to be singular. One sees the same singular (or at least, non-plural) convention across other mathematical and computational theories involving functions (algebra and lambda calculus for instance).
I am a fan of singular table names as they make my ER diagrams using CASE syntax easier to read, but by reading these responses I'm getting the feeling it never caught on very well? I personally love it. There is a good overview with examples of how readable your models can be when you use singular table names, add action verbs to your relationships and form good sentences for every relationships. It's all a bit of overkill for a 20 table database but if you have a DB with hundreds of tables and a complex design how will your developers ever understand it without a good readable diagram?
http://www.aisintl.com/case/method.html
As for prefixing tables and views I absolutely hate that practice. Give a person no information at all before giving them possibly bad information. Anyone browsing a db for objects can quite easily tell a table from a view, but if I have a table named tblUsers that for some reason I decide to restructure in the future into two tables, with a view unifying them to keep from breaking old code I now have a view named tblUsers. At this point I am left with two unappealing options, leave a view named with a tbl prefix which may confuse some developers, or force another layer, either middle tier or application to be rewritten to reference my new structure or name viewUsers. That negates a large part of the value of views IMHO.
I always thought that was a dumb convention. I use plural table names.
(I believe the rational behind that policy is that it make it easier for ORM code generators to produce object & collection classes, since it is easier to produce a plural name from a singular name than vice-versa)
I am of the firm belief that in an Entity Relation Diagram, the entity should be reflected with a singular name, similar to a class name being singular. Once instantiated, the name reflects its instance. So with databases, the entity when made into a table (a collection of entities or records) is plural. Entity, User is made into table Users. I would agree with others who suggested maybe the name User could be improved to Employee or something more applicable to your scenario.
This then makes more sense in a SQL statement because you are selecting from a group of records and if the table name is singular, it doesn't read well.
IMHO, table names should be plural like Customers.
Class names should be singular like Customer if it maps to a row in the Customers table.
Source: Stackoverflow.com