Key & Value

1. Case

👉 I do recommend: lowercase

lowercase

Lower case is the safest and simplest strategy. No providers restricts the use of lowercase letters.

However the legibility of compound names can be poor. One solution is to add word separators. In this case, to maintain consistency, you will have to use this separator on each of your compound words, even the simplest ones.

Camel case (PascalCase || dromedaryCase)

Some provider like GCP does not allow any uppercase in key or values.

UPPERCASE

No. Do NOT use full upercase.

About acronyms

You must also choose whether or not to keep acronyms in uppercase. If you choose to accept uppercase acronyms, their use with CamelCase may be illegible as is the case in lowercase. Adding a separator in addition to upper case to handle uppercase acronyms is unmanageable.

lowercase	lower + sep	Pascal Case	dromedary Case
env	env	Env	env
nodepool	node_pool	NodePool	nodePool
autoshutdownschedule	auto_shutdown_schedule	AutoShutdownSchedule	autoShutdownSchedule
awsaccount	aws_account	AWSAccount	AWSAccount

2. Separators

I distinguish 4 types of separators :

Compound words

nodepoo

Word separator

aks-pzkvig13g1-14517300-1

Scope separator

Norm separator

👉 I do prefer :

• Compound words : _ (underscore)

  JSON compliance

• Words separator : - (dash)

  Simple

• Scope separator : . (dot)

  Follow DNS principles

• Norm separator : / (slash)

  Clear separator, parsing is simple

Your choice must be made taking into account the tagging constraints imposed by your providers.

space / - _ .

3. Language

👉 I do recommend for a non-native English org : English

If English is not the official language of your organization, you must choose between your current language and the standard that is English. English has the advantage of not having accented characters. Despite the existence of UTF8, the handling of these non-ASCII characters can be a source of encoding problems.

Avoid Misspelling

If you have chosen English as your tagging language: pay attention to the very close spelling between your language and English.

For example (French vs English) :

FR	EN
ressource	resource
environnement	environment

4. Complete names or abbreviation

👉 I do recommend :

• For the few widely adopted, long and unambiguous name (eg: env, bu): abbreviation

• Others : complete names

The abbreviation of the tag names must serve a practical purpose.

• Long names are prone to typos

• It's easier to request keys with short names eg : env vs environnement

• Useful if char length is limited