Reserved words and characters

Learn about the words and characters to avoid in your database designs.

Several words and characters should be avoided in Phocas because, in software development, these words or characters typically have a specific meaning that might affect results.

Reserved words in measures

Count is a reserved word because when it’s used as a scalar, it depicts the count of rows in the transactions.

Trans is reserved for internal usage.

Reserved words in properties

Date is a technical term used across databases, so you cannot precede a property title with the word Date, as it will cause issues. For example, do not use Date ordered, Date created and so on.

Unsupported characters

\ (backslash mark) and / (forward slash mark) are reserved characters because they are common programming characters.

; (semi-colon) is a reserved character because it defines multiples when used in searches. For example, in an equal to search, it splits codes.

* (asterisk) is a reserved character for wildcard searches, so it shouldn't be used in raw data.

Reserved characters and words in Designer

Unsupported characters

The following characters should not be used in the names of measures, streams, properties, or dimensions:

\ (backslash mark)

/ (forward slash mark)

@ (at sign)

! (exclamation mark)

? (question mark)

~ (tilde mark)

| (vertical bar)

Reserved words

Code

Date

Trial Balance (for streams only)

Cash Flow (for streams only)

Reserved characters in Sync

. (period, full stop, or full point) is a reserved character because when it’s used in a file name, it can cause an application (such as Sync) to unexpectantly recognize the file with an unsupported file-type suffix. For example, a file named example_filename.txt might be correctly recognized as a text file. But a file named example.filename.txt could result in an unsupported file-type error if the application doesn’t support a file type of .filename.

_ (underscore) is a reserved character for source names but not for data items.