Question

I’m sorry if this is a stupid question or my title is a bit wrongly worded, but while creating my database for my assignment I see they want names like Returns and Address as a table name and table key name respectively.

It compiles no problem:

CREATE TABLE Returns 
(
..
)

and

CREATE TABLE Customers 
(
..
Address varchar(30) NOT NULL,
..
)

but I see my MS SQL Server 2008 sp1 Syntax editor makes the words Returns and Address the same colour as the CREATE TABLE statement (blue),thus i guess these are keyords of the SQL language.

So is this a good naming convention or should I switch to something like:
CustomerAddress and ProductReturns?

Answer 1

Read the Reserved Keywords for SQL-Server page at MSDN.

RETURNS is in the Future Keywords list which:

The following keywords could be reserved in future releases of SQL Server as new features are implemented. Consider avoiding the use of these words as identifiers.