Renaming Tables or Columns

To build a new data model, you re-create or synchronize the existing data model against the new database, and change the name of the tables or columns in the new data model to match those in the existing data model.

For example, a column orders.orddate is renamed orders.order_date (physical name). The original data model exposed this column as Orders.Orddate (display name). The new data model gives the column a default name of Orders.Order Date (display name). To replace the original data model with the new one, edit the properties of the column and change the display name to Orders.Orddate. An example, changing physical and display names is provided in Figure 2, Physical and Display Names Example.

Figure 2.  Physical and Display Names Example

Figure 1 shows an example of changing physical and display names as you are building a new data model.