Column Names in Data Warehouse

Hi all,

I'm working on my first data warehouse and I'm not sure how I should
name the columns in the database.

The first phase of the data warehouse is to store a bunch of data from
one third party source. The source contains over 100 pieces of data
and the business user doesn't even know what some of the fields are
but he wants to store everything. The third party refers to the each
field with a somewhat cryptic short name and a longer description.
The short name isn't always cryptic.

My question is am I better off naming my columns the same as the
source system's short name so that I can easily debug problems later?
Should I instead try to shorten their definition into something
meaningful? On a side note, I'm 100% positive that we'll never
populate the tables in questions with data from an additional source.

Thanks!

This is just my opinion (before everybody flames me) but I wouldn't use the
short names. In a data warehouse and as a general practice, it is better to
be descriptive so that people in the future will understand the design of
the system. If possible for your system you might want to try to mimic the
names of the fields that are in the report application. This way DBA and
techies will understand them and also regular business users, if there's
such a need

--
Sincerely,
John K
Knowledgy Consulting
http://knowledgy.org/

Atlanta's Business Intelligence and Data Warehouse Experts


"Jim" wrote in message

> Hi all,
>
> I'm working on my first data warehouse and I'm not sure how I should
> name the columns in the database.
>
> The first phase of the data warehouse is to store a bunch of data from
> one third party source. The source contains over 100 pieces of data
> and the business user doesn't even know what some of the fields are
> but he wants to store everything. The third party refers to the each
> field with a somewhat cryptic short name and a longer description.
> The short name isn't always cryptic.
>
> My question is am I better off naming my columns the same as the
> source system's short name so that I can easily debug problems later?
> Should I instead try to shorten their definition into something
> meaningful? On a side note, I'm 100% positive that we'll never
> populate the tables in questions with data from an additional source.
>
> Thanks!