Define column names and captions

The name of the database column is used to identify the column results in technical processes. This is relevant, for example, for the following:

The caption of the database column is the information that is displayed as column header in the tabular output of the query.

When you define a simple Alfabet query or a native SQL query, the name of a database column and the caption displayed in the report are identical. This chapter provides information about the standard column names and captions resulting from query definitions and the methods available to alter the names with instructions.

  • The special characters # and : as well as commas (,) are not allowed in column names.
  • Tabular reports in Alfabet have a fixed row high for the header cells. If the column caption is longer than the width of the header cell, no line break is used, but only part of the text is displayed with three dots at the end and the user can see the whole text in a tooltip when hovering over the cell.
  • The strings on the Alfabet user interface can be translated and the user interface can be rendered in other language cultures than the original English (USA) language culture. When query results are displayed on the Alfabet user interface in a translated version, column captions are only displayed translated if one of the following applies:
    • The string of the column caption is available in the standard vocabulary, for example because it is identical to an object class property caption.
    • The string of the column caption has been added manually to the vocabulary by writing it into the XML object VocXML.