Private or Public Synonyms for Database Objects – or no Synonyms at all ?

Summary

This decision support paper visualizes the pro's and contras in tabular form and evaluates the arguments.

The decision for private or public synonyms or against synonyms at all has impact on

• application (code) design
• user-administration
• how many database-instances will be required for development and testing (Budget- / Cost – Impact)

There is no “best” decision, the decision depends on the individual circumstances. It is very likely that two of the 5 approaches are selected for one application,

• one for the technical user account used by application batch-processes and application middle ware,
• an other one for Users connecting via Client-Server.

There might be one decision for the Development- and Test-Environments and another decision for the Production / Live Environment.

When selecting a standard software package the customer should

• assess if the approach used by the standard software package is compatible with his/her standards and/or requirements (e.g. if customer uses a 3rd party reporting tool)
• vendor's support for / acceptance of customizations (e.g. Does the vendor allow the customer to create additional private or public synonyms or will vendor drop support?)

When designing and developing individual software the customer should from the very first beginning make and document the decision. In case of

• Outsourced bespoke development it is recommended to document this in the requirement definition phase in the section “nonfunctional requirements”.
• In house development this also needs to be documented in the requirements document if it's not already in the companies designand development standards or if the requirements for this new project are different from the existing design- and development standards.

Audience

• Change Manager
• Operations Manager
• Testing Manager
• Application Support Staff
• System-DBA, Application-DBA, Development-DBA
• Quality Assurance Manager

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Private or Public Synonyms for Database Objects – or no Synonyms at all ?

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