The Leszynski naming convention (or LNC) is a variant of Hungarian notation popularized by consultant Stan Leszynski specifically for use with Microsoft Access development. Although the naming convention is nowadays often used within the Microsoft Access community, and is the standard in Visual Basic programming, it is not widely used elsewhere.
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The conventions are derived from an earlier set of conventions, the Leszynski/Reddick naming conventions, originally developed in 1992 by Greg Reddick. Eventually, Leszynski and Reddick had different ideas about how the conventions should be developed, and split into two separate sets of conventions, the other being the RVBA Conventions.
As in all Hungarian notations, it uses prefixes (called tags) to indicate the type of objects and database development fields. The general structure of Hungarian notation (named after Charles Simonyi's native country) is to break down object names into the following elements: [prefix(es)][tag]BaseName[Suffix/Qualifier] The tags are always lower-case and each word of the object name is capitalized. Spaces and underscores are not used.
Advantages
Since the Leszynski naming convention is a special form of Hungarian notation the same general advantages also apply to the Leszynski convention.
The use of distinctive prefixes makes your database self-documenting; when you see frmSales in VBA code, you will know that it references a form, and when you see curSales you will know that it is a Currency variable. When selecting a query from a drop-down list, you will know that a query starting with qmak is a make-table query, while one starting with quni is a union query. This information will allow you to avoid errors such as using the SetFocus method (a control method) with a field, or trying to open a table.
Disadvantages
Elements
The elements of the naming convention are described in the following table.