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Naming Conventions

Use these naming conventions to promote consistency and reduce the opportunity for errors.

  • Use Title Case for filenames, tab names and column names.
  • Do not store units in column names, use the DEFINITIONS table.
  • Do not start a column name with a number.

Considerations for optional PostgreSQL users

  • Tab names in Google Sheets are best if formatted in a valid way to be a Postgres table. Any spaces or hyphens will be converted to an underscore. Any other punctuation will be removed (although rare characters can still result in an error).
  • Column names in Google Sheets are best if formatted in a valid way to be a Postgres column. Any spaces, hyphens or forward and backward slashes will be converted to underscores. Parentheses will be removed.
  • Column names longer than 63 characters will be truncated.
  • Do not use a numeric format that includes a comma in the data.