3 1 2 Field Naming Standards

Visual LANSA

3.1.2 Field Naming Standards

Standards are needed to protect your investment in the repository. The following field naming recommendations are provided for "in house" application development, (as opposed to vendor "package" development).

Fields should be in the format xxxxxxiii where:

  • A field name should be 9 characters or less and should not contain an '#' or '@' symbol.
  • The xxxxxx part of the name should be 1 to 6 characters and as meaningful as possible given the size limitation. For example: PARTNO- Part Number, CUSTNO- Customer Number, SALQTY- Sales Quantity
  • The iii is optional and should be used for "working" or temporary versions of the original xxxxxx field in RDML functions.  The iii suffix should be standardized and only a limited number of variations allowed. For example:
    WRK- working value of the field
    VIR- virtual field definition
    TOT- totaled value of the field
  • All iii suffix versions of the field should be defined in the repository.

Also note the following recommendations:

  • File definitions should only contain xxxxxx field names (with the exception of virtual fields and predetermined join fields).
  • Do not define fields in RDML functions, even when the reference field option is used.  This greatly strengthens the cross-referencing power of LANSA.  Use the reference field option wherever possible.

An additional advantage of the above naming standards is that when a developer attempts to change the repository and specifies field name xxxxxx, all the iii variations will also appear due to LANSA's generic search and display facility.

While you may not choose to follow the samples provided, we strongly recommend that you enforce a set of standards for field names at your site.

Please review the LANSA Object Names in the LANSA Technical Reference Guide.

Also See

LANSA Application Design Guide

Ý 3.1 Getting Started with Repository Fields