"How are you going to know which id field your app has?" Depends on how your interface to the data-layer layer behaves. If you're going right into an associati

"How are you going to know which id field your app has?" Depends on how your interface to the data-layer layer behaves. If you're going right into an associative array, you may get "A.id" and "B.id" for free or you may have to explicitly rename A.id and B.id, e.g., "SELECT A.id as A_id...". That's not a consequence of using "id" as a column name, you'd have the same problem with any other name collision in a join unless you named every column databaseName_schemaName_tableName_columnName and you'd still have the problem in a self-join. "name all ... the foreign keys tablename_id." Sorry, I wasn't clear, I'm saying don't do that! Use a name that describes the relationship between the entity in the referencing relation and the entity in the referenced relation! In the parent-child case, I meant the parent column as a foreign key back to PERSON stored in a column called "parent", like CREATE TABLE PERSON (id int primary key.... parent int foreiegn key references PERSON(id)...) Using tablename_id is only going to get you one relationship per ordered-pair of tables, so its a non-starter, you may want to have parent and spouse relationships between PERSON and PERSON for instance, naming them both PERSON_ID... well you don't want to marry your mother :)