Naming question

[Guest]

Hello,

I have this table of questions for my questionnaire, and there are several
records called "other". I am wondering if I should change the names to be
unique, ie. rename the various "other" entries to "other this", "other that"
etc, or if it's ok to just leave them as "other" since they are uniquely
identified through their question ID, and also since there's only one per
category.
I would think that I wouldn't *have* to rename them, but maybe there are
conventions governing this kind of situation. Can anybody tell?

Thank you.

 

[Bill Mosca, MS Access MVP]

There really isn't a "naming convention" for what you call a field. What you
should be doing is naming fields so that their content is easily understood.
If OtherDiseases is better understood that Other, then go ahead and use it.

By the bye, don't use spaces in yor table or field names. If you need to
visually separate characters use an underscore other_diseases or camel case
(OtherDiseases). Spaces force the need to use square brackets around the
names.

 

[Guest]

All right, thanks.

And no, these are not "fields" in the sense that they are columns, these
are entries/records in a table in a field/column called "questions", ie. what
you called "content".

 

[Larry Linson]

In that case, you need to consider how you are going to process the data to
decide whether you can, at processing time, determine the question to which
the answer applies and how to handle "other." "Other" in answer to a
question about magazines you read would be a quite different _set of real
world objects_ than "other" in answer to a question about the car you drive,
but both "other" answers might very well be handled exactly the same... that
is, "something other than the specific options, so we just lump those
responses together."

Larry Linson
Microsoft Access MVP