Character type column names

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01-19-2017 11:35 AM
RobertKirkwood
Occasional Contributor III

Is it bad to name a column in an SDE table with a pound sign? For example: #_Conduit or #_Feature 

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8 Replies
Tarini_MehraMehra
New Contributor

Hi Robert,
Generally it is not a recommended practice to use special characters in a field/column name. The names should give an indication of what data is contained in that particular column.


Below would be a few web links for your reference:


FAQ: What characters should not be used in ArcGIS for field names and table names?
http://support.esri.com/technical-article/000005588

Defining fields in tables
http://desktop.arcgis.com/en/arcmap/10.3/manage-data/tables/design-defining-fields-in-tables.htm#GUI...

RobertKirkwood
Occasional Contributor III

Thanks. The geodatabase already has feature classes in it set up with column names that start with #. This was done a while back before i got here. Now i will be designing a web application using the tables with column names that start with the #. I was worried it might make queries act strange? 

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RobertKirkwood
Occasional Contributor III

Thanks, I did read that and it makes no mention of the #. So maybe it will be ok!

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MichaelVolz
Esteemed Contributor

You might want to clean up your data now (take the pain) and remove the # signs before you get deep into building/configuring your web applications where it might become much more difficult (painful) to clean your data with dependent apps hanging off non Best Practice data sets. 

RobertKirkwood
Occasional Contributor III

Ok! Thank you!

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MichaelVolz
Esteemed Contributor

Are you planning to use ESRI OOTB solutions based on their data models?

RobertKirkwood
Occasional Contributor III

I am going to be making the web application from scratch

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