If I were to guess, about a decade ago, indexing a column, had restrictions on how long the column could be. During that time, 254 was the limit for columns that needed an index. That may explain why the 254 limit - it does not however explain why it was 30 characters back then and 80 now as imposed by the development clients.
I'm guessing the other reasons could well be keeping the Mid-Tier URL's to a shorter?? Just my guesses. Joe _____ From: Action Request System discussion list(ARSList) [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Charlie Lotridge Sent: Wednesday, February 19, 2014 4:04 PM To: [email protected] Subject: Why the 80 character name limit on workflow objects? ** In the recent "Friday Special" thread, there was some discussion about object naming and the need for good naming conventions. The naming convention I've developed for my own use over the years starts with a structured portion (identifying the schema, triggering criteria, execution order, etc), but allows for a brief description of the objects purpose at the end. This is very convenient, because the fact is that the name is by far the best way to "document" the workflow in an easily accessible and meaningful way (Help Text requires you to open the object making it not very convenient). As someone who exclusively does custom workflow (and a lot of custom workflow), I very frequently bump up against the 80 character limit on the names of objects (specifically AL's, filters, and guides). And just as frequently, I use one of a few tricks to disregard the limit and set the name to be whatever it is I'd like it to be. The fact is, the underlying data dictionary columns for these names support values up to 254 characters in length (at least on Oracle & SQL Server). Also, the ARS server itself doesn't care if these name lengths exceed the 80 character limit (in that it won't throw an error if the name exceeds 80, but as I've never tried to exceed the 254 column limit so I don't know what it would do). And the workflow works just fine...I've been doing this for years. In fact, the only thing imposing that limit is the Dev Studio (and the Admin tool before it). With either, though, selecting multiple objects then using the Edit->Rename mechanism is one way to expand the name beyond the limit. But this is an inconvenient and awkward way of doing it. So why the limit? Can anyone hazard a guess? Or...Doug? Does anyone else find this inconvenient? -charlie _ARSlist: "Where the Answers Are" and have been for 20 years_ _______________________________________________________________________________ UNSUBSCRIBE or access ARSlist Archives at www.arslist.org "Where the Answers Are, and have been for 20 years"
