Re:Ultorg: A user interface for relational databases [video]
by eirikbakke on Tuesday May 03, 2022 @10:46PM
(#31256186)
Column names are used primarily to inform the detection of "heading" fields, i.e. fields that should be given a larger font in the form layout, or fields that should be shown by default when adding a join to another table. The other heuristics are based on things such as data type, average length of strings, and average join cardinalities.
(Coincidentally, the system is named after a cryptic, context-specific column name in a real dataset the author once worked on.)
This is a very good question.. In the section of the video on automatic form layout it is strongly implied that the auto-layout is driven by semantic inference of the column names. I see this easily breaking -- anyone who's ever inherited a production database knows that column names are often cryptic or context specific.
Also makes me wonder how well that system handles databases with non-English identifiers?