Why `symbolicName_t` is limited to 64 chars?
OleksandrKvl opened this issue · 3 comments
Looking and XSD I was surprised to find that symbolicName_t has max length set to 64. It looks artificial to me, is it really needed?
It is arguable what the max length should be, but having a limit has these potential benefits:
- Limits resource allocation
- Makes documentation more regular by limiting width of table columns
- Possibly avoids errors in typing very long names
The current FIX specification limits message, component, code, and field names to 64 characters.
I'm surprised FIX has this limitation too since those names are not part of the binary representation. Thanks for the answer.
@OleksandrKvl my answer would be that there is no good reason to have extremely long field names. It forces the person defining such a name to focus on the most important terms representing the semantic of the field. The value 64 may seem arbitrary but I do not see an issue. Field names are often used for display purposes in GUIs or documentation. Legibility does not get better with even longer names. There was no technical reason for the limitation.