Question on DB fields

[czentman]

Just curious if you can tell me when you use the # sign in field names. Why you sometimes use this symbol and sometimes not and what does it tell you.

[czentman]

Another question is why is the rootID a negative number?

[BobRichards]

One or two # symbols are appended to the Field Code names for Custom Fields. These are created through the SPAdmin management console (ProForm/Custom Fields). Third party integrations sometimes add additional Custom Fields for proprietary shell/server packages or other reasons.

Fields that do not have the symbol (such as Project) are created as part of the order model.

As so far as why the the RootId is negative, we start with the smallest signed integer (-2147483648) and monotonically increase as we proceed. We use one or more integers for some table primary keys for performance reasons in the SQL database.

[czentman]

I'm referring to the # in the column names for example
select * from [pfm].[Contact] the field names are Id#, LastId#, Type#, Address#Address1, Address#Address1@, PaymentInfo#ABARoutingNumber

[BobRichards]

It does not have any special meaning. In some cases it serves as a logical separator.