Re: Can column name aliases be supported?

On Thu, Aug 23, 2012 at 2:19 PM, Craig Ringer <ringerc(at)ringerc(dot)id(dot)au> wrote:
> On 08/23/2012 11:56 AM, Chris Angelico wrote:
>>
>> Here's an out-of-the-box suggestion.
>>
>> Drop the column altogether and have a single column "name". Trying to
>> divide names up never works properly. Does "surname" mean family name?
>> Not all cultures put the family name last. Is "last_name" simply the
>> part of the name after the last space?
>
> +1 to that, and it gets way worse:
>
> http://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/06/17/falsehoods-programmers-believe-about-names/

Yes, that link was posted on python-list a little while back, and
that's what I had in mind as I was writing that up. Couldn't remember
the actual link though. Thanks!

> and while you're at it, read this:
>
> http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/Unicode.html

Definitely. I disagree with Joel Spolsky on many things, but I agree
with that post. These days, Unicode is an absolute necessity. Our
PHP-based web site has a number of issues with Unicode input, but at
least everything that goes through the database (we use Postgres for
everything) is safe.

ChrisA