default database schema and relationships

arigold
2007-02-13T00:58:26Z

hi everyone..

i''m a high school teacher who wrote a webapp in PHP and MySQL for my
curriculum.. i use it to keep attendance, take notes per student or
class and keep track of activities.  i would like to soup it up and
have read both the pickax and version 2 of agile web dev...

now i''m starting to work and i''d like to rename columns and
relationships in the database so that when i create rails
functionality to work with the database i can use the same database.
yep, i dont want to copy the data to a new database and have two apps
and two databases but its live - im using it daily.  i''d like to
slowly move the functionality to the rails app and eventually just
archive the PHP one.  but before i do that i have to switch my primary
keys to the rails defaults and the join tables and all that jazz to
the rails defaults..

i''m not worried about the data because i back it up and if all else
fails i''ll just do the ol'' INSERT INTO or UPDATE commands in
terminal.

all that being said (phew) are the different defaults for rails in
terms of column types (id type, etc) and singular plural conventions
kept in one place somewhere?  has anyone made a list?  ive searched
the web quite a bit and was going to start going through v2 of agile
web dev but i thought i''d try an email before i got too into it..

sorry for the long background but i thought it best to be thorough..

thanks..~ari