Probably a dumb question, but here goes...

Who or what are SAP and BAAN?

>>I really agree with your comment about searching through the code. If you have a field named just "id", there is essentially no way to search through your code for it. If you have a small project, that is fine. We have a really large project and field names that are short or are common letter groupings such as "id" are basically impossible to search for because you get too many matches with other words.
>>
>
>Exactly, Jonathan. The "Field Name" is more like a "key"; if we want something more "friendly" to present to the outside world, there are other ways. Most Report Writers (like Crystal Reports) have facilities that allow one to map "our" Field and Table Names to "friendly" User names that help facilitate User report writing.
>
>We're in good company; SAP and BAAN maintain literally thousands of tables and they do it with short, unique field names.