What's the Correct or most popular name for a Association table? I've heard Lookup,associative,resolving,mapping and junction table so far?
Thank you in advance;-)
views:
126answers:
7I call them Cross Reference tables as well.
dretzlaff17
2010-06-15 14:45:07
I also favour this name. It's a succinct way of expressing the role of the table.
Hammerite
2010-06-15 15:00:50
I have to say I'm totally against your naming convention. If you accept that such a table is a relationship table then the table name should reflect the relationship. I think that most data modellers would call the relationship between customers and products 'Orders'.
onedaywhen
2010-06-16 07:36:13
+1
A:
Depends on whom you ask. They're all correct, use the term that makes the most sense to who you're talking to.
Alex Larzelere
2010-06-15 12:25:46
+1
A:
Do you call your customer table CustomerTable or Customer or Customers? I generally use a "business object" name (eg Orders for information about which customers have ordered which products, not CustomerProduct) but a table that really just tracks the relationship, like SalesRepCustomer, I give the name of the two tables involved and don't add a suffix. As others say, be consistent.
I reserve the name lookup (in conversation, not in the table name) for things like "what is the name of Country 11", not for "which sales rep looks after Country 11".
Kate Gregory
2010-06-15 12:28:18
+1 HOWEVER for a table that tracks a relationship, the 'business' will usually already have a name for that relationship e.g. for the business I work for, the Sales staff who look after specific customers are known as 'account managers'.
onedaywhen
2010-06-16 07:48:26
+2
A:
Relationship table.
"One of the basic tricks in SQL is representing a many-to-many relationship. You create a third table that references the two (or more) tables involved by their primary keys. This third table has quite a few popular names, such as 'junction table' or 'join table,' but I know that it is a relationship."
onedaywhen
2010-06-15 13:18:58
A:
We call these Crosswalk tables where I work. Naming is based on Table1XTable2 where the contents are the PKs of the 2 tables.
wergeld
2010-06-15 13:48:47
A:
"Correct" depends on the modeling methodology in use. I am familiar with Chen, in which this table is the physical implementation of an Associative Entity. I suppose most popular would be directly related to most popular modeling methodology.
Wikipedia lists several names for this type of table.
DCookie
2010-06-15 15:15:43