asked on

Customer Form

Hello Experts,

I would like some advice / feedback on proper column names, data types and lengths for the following I need to collect from my customers. Also, PLEASE let me know if I can improve the type of information that I'm collecting.

Display Name As
Company Name
First Name
Last Name
Address
City
State
Zip Code
Phone Number
Mobile Phone Number
Email Address

ASKER CERTIFIED SOLUTION

Jim Horn

membership

This solution is only available to members.

To access this solution, you must be a member of Experts Exchange.

Start Free Trial

Brian

ASKER

Thank you for that info Jim. Yes, will be using English names and customers would only be in the US. Also, I forgot to include Display Name As "DisplayNameAs". There is alot of redundancy data that I'm collecting and not sure if this is a good approach. Not every customer is a "Company". So when I retrieve a list of ALL Customers I need to have a field name like Display Name As in my DB that shows a single Company or Person.

Jim Horn

>Not every customer is a "Company"
As long as the column is defined NOT NULL you'll be fine. NULL is the default unless explicitly stated. Also it wouldn't be the worst thing in the world to learn about your data as it is collected, and then make minor changes.

Brian

ASKER

Ok, I wasn't sure if there was a field or two that I could use instead of having fields called DisplayNameAs, CompanyName, FirstName and LastName.

SOLUTION

Scott Fell

membership

This solution is only available to members.

To access this solution, you must be a member of Experts Exchange.

Start Free Trial

Brian

ASKER

@Scott, very good advice.. Thank you, I will definitely implement that.

Brian

ASKER

@Scott,

For the DateCreated and DateModified should those Data Types be DateTime? I'm using SQL Server and wasn't sure if I need to add anything else to DateTime. I would like the format to be DATETIME - format: YYYY-MM-DD HH:MI:SS for DateCreated and DateModified. DateModified will only be updated when I need to update that customer. DateCreated will never change.

Scott Fell

> DATETIME - format: YYYY-MM-DD HH:MI:SS

That looks good. it goes through YYYY-MM-DD HH:MI:SS.9999

I keep the fraction of a second because it can help in troubleshooting later for something like duplicates getting created. For display, I will just use YYYY-MM-DD HH:MI:SS

Brian

ASKER

Yes, but in SQL Server it's asking for Data Type which is either "DateTime" or "DateTime2". But is there anything that I need to add to that column to give me the format above that i need?

Jim Horn

The question was answered as asked.

Brian

ASKER

I apologize for the late reply. I have been away for awhile.