On 24/08/07, Jim Hu <jimhu(a)tamu.edu> wrote: There's no hard-and-fast rules, but I'd recommend picking a name that isn't going to conflict with any other possible use of a table by the same name, where that table would be named according to common sense. You might prefix the table names with the name of the extension, for instance. If it's just one table, having the table name be the same *as* the extension is probably good idea. Rob Church

Actually, most things around mediawiki take a 2 letter start on what they're from then what they are. Notice the $wg, and wf. w stands for Wiki, g for global, and f for funtion. So $wg = Wiki Global, wf = Wiki Function. Similarly some extension authors have e stand for extension and... Here $eg = Extension Global, and ef = Extension Function If we give Database tables the letter t then using a prefix of et for Extension Table then the extension name appears to follow the unwritten standard that most people seam to use around MediaWiki. wg = Wiki Global wf = Wiki Function eg/Id/ = Extension Global for Extension /ID/ ef/Id/ = Extension Function for Extension /ID/ et/Id/ = Extension Table for Extension /ID /Of course we don't add any wt prefix to MediaWiki Database tables because we have $wgDBprefix. Make enough sense? Your tables in this format would be: wtTableEdit_box wtTableEdit_row wtTableEdit_row_metadata wtVote ~Daniel Friesen(Dantman) of The Gaiapedia, Wikia Graphical Entertainment Project, and Wiki-Tools.com Jim Hu wrote:

DanTMan wrote: [...] Shouldn't that then be: etTableEdit_box etc... But $wgDBprefix should be applied to all tables. If you have a wiki family sharing MySQL, the only differentiation between each member of the family is the relative value of $wgDBprefix. Hence the end result is $wgDBprefix . "etTableEdit_box" e.g. en.etTableEdit_box fr.etTableEdit_box de.etTableEdit_box etc.. Mike

Rob Church wrote: He meant "a wiki family sharing the same MySQL table". I see it much less odd than the statement that "we don't add any wt prefix to MediaWiki Database tables because we have $wgDBprefix."

Michael Daly wrote: You can have this system (designed for hosts which only allow one database per user) or use the more common system of one database per install.

On Aug 25, 2007, at 2:59 PM, Rob Church wrote: I've never actually used the database prefix option provided by the installer. From later messages in the thread, it sounds like people use it for different language versions? I'm not sure I understand why one would use it instead of just installing another MW database. Does wikipedia use these prefixes? Are there some shared tables that don't get prefixed? ===================================== Jim Hu Associate Professor Dept. of Biochemistry and Biophysics 2128 TAMU Texas A&M Univ. College Station, TX 77843-2128 979-862-4054

^_^ sorry wt was an accident... Thought I was using et... I can't clearly remember how long I've been up... But I know I'm sleepy enough that I don't feel like digging through my IRC log to find out when I got on... That note on $wgDBprefix is a note on the different level of prefixing. We prefix tables with $wgDBprefix so that they don't interfere with the tables for another wiki or other software using the same database. The idea of prefixing an extensions table is so that it doesn't interfere with future tables added to the MediaWiki software or in other extensions. But MediaWiki tables, don't interfere with MediaWiki tables, because there is only one type of MediaWiki software by one group, unlike extensions which are partly made by people outside of the software, and outside of communication with most others doing the same. So we don't add a wt prefix to the actual MediaWiki tables. So we end up with: For core tables: $wgDBprefix . tableName For extension tables: $wgDBprefix . 'et' . ExtensionName . TableName ~Daniel Friesen(Dantman) of The Gaiapedia, Wikia Graphical Entertainment Project, and Wiki-Tools.com Michael Daly wrote: