Comment by taeric
4 years ago
This is... An odd choice. I'd assume I'm not without context looking at a query to know why I would want those columns.
And the auto complete story is backwards. Often I know what columns I want, but I'm not clear what table I need to get them from. Such that, if you make a smarter suggest in the from to only include tables that have the columns, I'd be much happier.
Just throwing in another point of anecdata onto this pile: "Often I know what columns I want, but I'm not clear what table I need to get them from" does not make sense to me. I don't relate at all to their being a global namespace of columns, rather than a namespace of tables, each with its own columns specific to its context.
I challenge this. I accept that there are ambiguities, but I assert that you can go really fast by just telling someone to fetch a few columns by name.
I further assert that if your database is filled with "Id" and "name" columns, instead of "department_name" and similar, you are probably as likely to mess up a join as any benefit you get from the name being short. (And really, what advantage is there in short names nowadays?)
That all said. I worded my take too strongly. My point should have been that auto suggest should not be confined in either direction.
I think we have just done most of our data work in different environments.
When I'm trying to query stuff, the first question is "which service's database is that in?", so I can guess "user_service" (or whatever I think it is called), but I have no idea what they call anything in their schema, but now that the autocomplete system knows what table I'm interested in, it can help me figure that out.
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