SQL Server Constraints

We understand that many professionals want to have a naming convention enforced when upsizing objects to SQL Server, and that they probably want to use their own convention.

MUST has two built in templates for naming conventions, and uses a meta-tag language to define the naming constraints so you can change the default settings to match your own needs using our symbolic tokens.

SQL Server has a maximum constraint name length of 128 characters, and once you have established your naming convention we will enforce the convention subject to the uniqueness of the constraint name. MUST will succeed in most situations in generating additional uniqueness if your naming convention fails by adding a numerical suffix to any constraint that fails.

Changing Naming Convention Setting

Use the “Options and Settings Ribbon” – “Preferences” - “Naming Conventions” tab to change these settings.

We offer four built in variations based around two templates. The two variations on the templates offer the option to add schema names to the convention.

Once you have selected a template, you can edit any of the constraint setting subject to rules we have added to minimise conflicts and errors.

We decided to group these naming rules around three groups of objects.

Special field naming conventions

MUST has a naming convention for timestamps and our optional auditing fields. Below we show one example :-

Constraint naming conventions

This covers the most popular constraints that you may want to name in SQL Server.

Trigger naming conventions

Where triggers are generated we offer the following options.

Tokens

Constraints are typed in using a combination of free text such as pk or PK for the primary key, and tokens or tags such as <table> for the table name or <field> for a field name.