Principles of Data Management

The naming of attributes: a formal description

41. As described in paragraph 28b, a ‘full attribute name’ consists of the concatenation of the entity type name and the ‘short attribute name’, where the latter is the unique name of the attribute within the entity type.

42. There are a number of formal approaches to the naming of attributes, but most see a ‘full attribute name’ broken down into three components. These components can be given different names within different approaches to naming, but a common classification identifies these components as:

• a prime term, which is mandatory;

• a modifier term, which is optional;

• a class term, which is mandatory.

43. The prime term identifies the context for the attribute, i.e. the set of things that this ...