Question

I am setting up a MySQL database with multiple tables. Several of the tables will have fields with similar names that aren’t necessarily for the same purpose.

For example, there’s a users table that will have a name field, a category table with a name field and so on.

I’ve previously seen this setup up either with or without a preface to the field name, so in the above example using user_name, cat_name etc.

As these are all in separate tables, is there any benefit to structuring the database with or without this preface? I know that when using joins and calling the data through PHP you have to add a SELECT users.name AS username... to keep the fields from overwriting each other when using mysql_fetch_array. But i’m not sure if there’s any efficiencies in using one method over the other?

Answer 1

It’s really just a matter of preference. I personally prefer the approach of using just name.

One thing to watch out for though, if you’re doing any SELECT * FROM ... queries (which you shouldn’t be; always select fields explicitly), you may end up selecting the wrong data.