>I am with Joe Celko in this regard. He is a great authority when it comes to standards. In fact, he would prefer Personnel to Employees as a table name.

Note that I mentioned some literature suggests singular for master tables and plural for tables containing transactions. (Since much of what I do these days is in data warehousing, that basically translates to singular for dimension tables and plural for fact tables). But what annoys me the most is when data teams publish DDL that is inconsistent.

But note you used the word "prefer"...."in fact, he would prefer..." Preferences seldom (if ever) improve performance or delivery. They are preferences.

On Joe Celko - I'm a great admirer of his book/articles. This conversation made me go back and thumb through his "Programming Style book" - I had almost forgotten the gems in the book.

But what I don't admire (and what nearly detracts from his accomplishments) is his interaction with the public. His treatment of newbie questions on different forums over the years is deplorable and embarrassing. I was an instructor for five years and I have a pretty good handle on how to take newbie questions and shape them. I don't mind seeing forum leaders show "tough love", but too many times Celko has berated people and treated them very rudely without any cause.

He's also had to eat some pretty large crow when it comes to the predictions he made back in 2009-2010 about Microsoft and the data warehousing market. It's clear that he prefers Oracle and that's fine - but he's been corrected on forums before for misstatements about the Microsoft platform.

Don't get me wrong - I have great respect for what he's written. I just don't believe in deifying.