Field names easy question

Hi,

If I have
table A_______table_B
field1A________field1B
field2A________field2B

Instead of the above, I just define them as:
table A_______table_B
field1________field1
field2________field2

Different tables, but each table has field names that are the same as the other table. Any problem?

Thanks,
John

John,

That's perfectly fine... Just be careful that when querying both tables in a JOIN you need to precede the field name with the table name:

tableA.field1, tableB.field1, etc...

If you are doing a query involving both of these tables at once (join or union), you may then have to alias (using AS) one set of those variables so that they have a unique name in the scope of the query. Otherwise, no prob.

For easier maintenance I would suggest that you use "unique table" fields..

What I always do is place an abbreviation in the field name, something like this

table (customers)
fields:
cst_id
cst_name
cst_address
etc.

table (invoice)
fields:
inv_id
inv_cst_id
inv_date

This makes it more clear for myself during programming. Later on you'll probably make the names more generic but why not name some things to the information they have. (I bet you can see that these tables have an inner join and that one customer can have multiple invoices.

Cheers + hope this helps as well.
Werner