Model Object Naming Preferences › Model Object Naming Preferences

Model Object Naming Preferences

To share and reuse model objects within your organization, develop naming standards for logical and physical model objects so that everyone in your organization uses names consistently and correctly. If you do not use naming standards, you can have modeling design problems that can produce errors when you run queries to extract particular sets of data. For this reason, you can enforce naming standards by setting model object naming preferences.

You can set model object naming preferences to control how:

• Logical model objects are named.
• Physical model objects are named.
• Physical model object names are derived from logical object names.
• Unique names for entities, tables, views, attributes, and columns are enforced.

Logical naming options are for names of entities, domains, attributes, relationships, key groups, and validation rules. Maximum length is not required in the logical model, but you may want to enforce a maximum.

Physical naming options are for the names of tables, domains, columns, relationships, indexes, and validation rules. Maximum length is set, by default, to the maximum length allowed by the selected target DBMS. You can change this to a smaller number, however. For example, if you are managing a multiple target DBMS environment and want to use a lowest common denominator approach. As physical names are entered (as opposed to when they are derived based upon logical names), special characters may be allowed or disallowed.

You can also attach a naming standards file (*.nsm) to a model, if you plan to use abbreviations and alternate abbreviations. You specify words, abbreviations, and alternate abbreviations in the naming standards glossary.

The macro language is used along with the Naming Standards Model glossary. For example, if the macro is %EntityName, the terms looked up in the glossary are those related to Entity Names.

Note: Certain name changes override other name standards you may have in place. Any name changes applied to the physical side of a model, whether it is table name overrides, domain name overrides, domain option overrides, or column name overrides, take precedence over the options on the Name Mapping tab. For default logical to physical name conversion, options within the Name Mapping tab are applied left to right. That is, even if Use Glossary is selected, the match is based upon the macro in the Macro column. A prefix or suffix can still be added.

You can set model object naming preferences for each model that you create using the Model Naming Options dialog.

The model object naming preferences are used when you:

• Derive a physical model from a logical model, derive a physical model from a physical model, or derive a logical model from a physical model.
• Add a model source.
• Create a logical and physical model, and switch from the logical model to the physical model.
• Create a logical and physical model by reverse engineering from a DBMS or script file. Information is extracted from the DBMS or script file, and you can have it automatically derive logical model object names from the physical names in the DBMS or script file.