In the following section each of these issues will be looked at in turn.
Naming conventions Try to keep field names descriptive rather than cryptic.
The crib sheet for decoding cryptic names may easily get lost, and your fields are likely to be too numerous for you to remember their contents easily. It is essential that the same data definitions are used for all instances of the key field in your database and that the same codes are used in each. Character field definitions Take care with character field definitions. Most databases require character data to be stored in a fixed length form and so, inevitably, this means that every record must contain enough space for the largest expected, even where this is not required for the vast majority of records. Validation Get in the habit of ensuring that the data entered into any field in your attribute database makes sense.