Guidelines

Here are some guidelines on database design:

• Use only lower-case letters, digits, and underscores for the names of databases, database tables, and database columns. This avoids problems when moving database between different operating systems (e.g. between Windows and Linux).
• The tables_to_cache entry of the run_configuration in urbansim.configs.base_config lists the tables required for the models used in the Puget Sound region. (This information should be in the psrc package, not the urbansim package; we will fix this in the future.)
• Avoid overly abbreviated names. While very short names were required by some other systems, UrbanSim itself has no limit on the length of names. Most database system allow database names, table names and column names to be 32 characters, 64 characters (e.g. MySQL), or more.