Right - I have a question for database designers

[guestgulkan]

or possibly database implementors (i.e those persons who set up databases and queries for banks etc...);

my surname is st.clair

you will notice the dot or period in the name.
it is not two seperate words or anything weird yet it still seems to throw people using databases.

One thing i've heard is
the database won't accept a dot i'll have to use a space - which always causes a problem when they have to look up my name.

It just infuriates me!

 

[alvechurchdata]

One thing i've heard is the database won't accept a dot i'll have to use a space

That's just an excuse for bad design.

Geoff Franklin

http://www.alvechurchdata.co.uk

 

[SQLDenis]

A dot should be no problem in my opinion

Denis The SQL Menace
SQL blog:

http://sqlservercode.blogspot.com/

Personal Blog:

http://otherthingsnow.blogspot.com/

 

[johnherman]

The only difficulty I see is that you have a two word last name, but that happens and most systems can deal with it. For example Van Halen or Del Amico.

I agree, bad design or code. Aside from the period for St., systems should be able to handle hyphens (Hillary Rodham-Clinton), apostrophes (O'Brien), mixed capitals and lower case (McCarthy, D'Angelica), foreign accents (Cartagena), and even foreign characters.

For your amusement, however, I offer the following. About a dozen years ago, I was a Project Manager. Several times I received mail addressed to John Herman Project with my title as Manager.

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The trouble with doing something right the first time is that nobody appreciates how difficult it was - Steven Wright

 

[ceh4702]

I dont see why the system can't accept a dot/period. We use a simple database (IBM Unidata) that is not even relational and we use fields that are basically all text. We use fields all that time with period separators.

Personally I dont see the big deal.

You know what your name is, but it would be nice to see it printed properly.Face it People are kind of vain creatures. This is not a post against you or your name. The point being is that in a Database, there can be millions of names and to change something like this it affects so many records.

If you do not like my post feel free to point out your opinion or my errors.

 

[mrdenny]

Other than poor database design and/or poor application design I can't see a good reason to not have a period in a name field.

Denny
MCSA (2003) / MCDBA (SQL 2000)

--Anything is possible. All it takes is a little research. (Me)

http://www.mrdenny.com

 

[oharab]

Try having an apostrophy!
The name O'Hara causes no end of problems. Usually because of lazy programming.

It's even worse for my wife, who's email address includes the apostrophy. There are loads of sites where she can't register with her work email address because of it. IIRC it even fails on one of the systems built by the people who set up her email address!

B.

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Ben O'Hara

http://www.RobotParade.co.uk

We could be confused in exactly the same way, but confusion might be like Nulls, and not comparable.