On Thu, Aug 23, 2012 at 2:19 PM, Craig Ringer <ringerc@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > On 08/23/2012 11:56 AM, Chris Angelico wrote: >> >> Here's an out-of-the-box suggestion. >> >> Drop the column altogether and have a single column "name". Trying to >> divide names up never works properly. Does "surname" mean family name? >> Not all cultures put the family name last. Is "last_name" simply the >> part of the name after the last space? > > +1 to that, and it gets way worse: > > http://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/06/17/falsehoods-programmers-believe-about-names/ Yes, that link was posted on python-list a little while back, and that's what I had in mind as I was writing that up. Couldn't remember the actual link though. Thanks! > and while you're at it, read this: > > http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/Unicode.html Definitely. I disagree with Joel Spolsky on many things, but I agree with that post. These days, Unicode is an absolute necessity. Our PHP-based web site has a number of issues with Unicode input, but at least everything that goes through the database (we use Postgres for everything) is safe. ChrisA -- Sent via pgsql-general mailing list (pgsql-general@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx) To make changes to your subscription: http://www.postgresql.org/mailpref/pgsql-general
