Column Naming Convention

Hi All,

Quick question hopefully… SQL convention is to populate spaces in name with an underscore. Power BI convention is to replace underscore with spaces. Apart from looking cleaner can anyone think how e.g [Total Sales] would be better then [Total_Sales]. I was thinking if it would have any impact on Q&A functionality or intellisense? I have read it can but not quite sure how…

Look forward to hearing from you all :wink:

@Hitman ,

The main difference I think would be that the more “natural” name (i.e., without underscores) could be used in visuals without having to change the name to make it look better in titles/axes/tooltips/etc.

  • Brian
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I agree with Brian’s statement, from what I’ve seen the Power Bi convention of spaces and natural language is actually to improve the design experience and development for less technical users. Going back to the democratization of report development through Power Bi.

It certainly speeds up my design element if I don’t have to rename columns every time I use them in a Matrix or Table visual. :slight_smile:

Thanks guys. Nice point Re titles. Doesn’t sound like it impacts Q&A though…

@Hitman ,

Nope. Shouldn’t matter from that perspective.

A tangential point about underscores - while I wouldn’t use them for column names, I am adopting the leading underscore for variable names as recommended by @Greg in his terrific Best Practices series.

  • Brian
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