When you create a new table in SQL Server the default name is dbo.Table_# with # being the new table value. I rename my tables without the dbo. and it is almost always plural. Looking at TFS collections I noticed all the tables were named with one of the following prefixes Codesense.tbl_ / dbo. / dbo.tbl_ where they were mostly singular names regardless of the prefix.

There is a fair amount of noise online on whether tables should be plural / singular online but nothing really mentioned prefixes such as dbo. or dbo.tbl_.

My question isn't really about naming tables with plural / singular names but more about the dbo. dbo.tbl_ prefix. Is this the SQL version of Hungarian notation where I can freely avoid or is there some kind of rule where it is best to follow this practice and name tables with dbo. / dbo.tbl_ prefixes?

Edit: This applies to other areas of the DB too, almost everything is created with dbo. but I figured I would figured I would talk about the table prefixes only

Thanks for the reply. I had a look at this http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd283095(v=SQL.100).aspx after I wrote the question. I was quite surprised I never came across this but then after doing some reading it makes sense as I am not doing DB work in a team however due to the way it helps combining tables I must admit it is much better than my current 'separate by underscore' approach.

Anyway thanks for the reply.