SQL Table Aliases - Good or Bad? [closed]

Answer 1

Microsoft SQL's query optimiser benefits from using either fully qualified names or aliases.

Personally I prefer aliases, and unless I have a lot of tables they tend to be single letter ones.

--seems pretty readable to me ;-)
select a.Text
from Question q
    inner join Answer a
        on a.QuestionId = q.QuestionId

There's also a practical limit on how long a Sql string can be executed - aliases make this limit easier to avoid.

Answer 2

I always use aliases, since to get proper performance on MSSQL you need to prefix with schema at all times. So you'll see a lot of

Select Person.Name From
dbo.Person As Person

Answer 3

I suppose the only thing that really speaks against them is excessive abstraction. If you will have a good idea what the alias refers to (good naming helps; 'a', 'b', 'c' can be quite problematic especially when you're reading the statement months or years later), I see nothing wrong with aliasing.

As others have said, joins require them if you're using the same table (or view) multiple times, but even outside that situation, an alias can serve to clarify a data source's purpose in a particular context. In the alias's name, try to answer why you are accessing particular data, not what the data is.

Answer 4

I like long explicit table names (it's not uncommon to be more than 100 characters) because I use many tables and if the names aren't explicit, I might get confused as to what each table stores.

So when I write a query, I tend to use shorter aliases that make sense within the scope of the query and that makes the code much more readable.

Answer 5

If I write a query myself (by typing into the editor and not using a designer) I always use aliases for the table name just so I only have to type the full table name once.

I really hate reading queries generated by a designer with the full table name as a prefix to every column name.

Answer 6

I always use aliases when writing queries. Generally I try and abbreviate the table name to 1 or 2 representative letters. So Users becomes u and debtor_transactions becomes dt etc...

It saves on typing and still carries some meaning.

The shorter names makes it more readable to me as well.