User Guide > Best Practices > Design for Reuse > Use Naming Conventions
Was this helpful?
Use Naming Conventions
Always use and follow naming conventions for several facets of integration such as:
Workspaces
You must consider workspaces as collections of projects and name them accordingly. The default name for each user is workspace. This suffices if you regularly use a source control system and develop on your local system. If you have design repositories on a remote network share, you must name your local workspaces accordingly so that you can switch from one workspace to the other.
Projects
Organize and name the project folders based on the business requirements of the integrations. For example, "Outbound Purchase Orders" and "Inbound Payments". This provides some flexibility in case changes occur over time. Integrations that provide core or commonly used functionality must be named this way and customized variants (that is, specific to certain customers) must have their own project folders.
Artifacts
While the file names have extensions that are associated with the design editors, you must also standardize the naming conventions for artifacts. This helps to quickly locate them when using other interfaces such as the operating system's file explorer, source control, or a command prompt. You can use technical terms to name artifacts because they are more closely tied to specific applications or technologies.
For example (use a format that suits your business):
p_FTP_Send (process)
m_SF_Accounts_Update (map)
s_CustomerMaster (schema)
script_Lookup_Contact (script)
Variables and Object Names
Variables and object names are used in Actian DataConnect similar to all programming languages. You can follow conventions for the required language. It is recommended to follow Java naming conventions such as case-sensitive, no spaces, camelCase for compound words, and so on. Also, it is a good practice to preface the name with the type of variable (that is, array, message object, and so on).
 
For example:
v_streetAddress
array_streetAddresses
msg_In
msg_Error
Macros and Constants
Macros and constants are similar to variables. Their names are expanded to values at runtime. However, they have slightly different rules and are typically used to dynamically provide a value that remains static throughout the runtime of the integration. They are also case-sensitive. Therefore, it is recommended to use all caps to distinguish these from variables and object variable names. For example:
PASSWORD_SF
USERNAME_SAP
SERVER_PROD
FOLDER_NAME
Last modified date: 02/09/2024