Interchangeability of’vendor’ and’service provider’
My use case is variable and database table/column naming. The table will reference professional photography service providers. Should you insist on unabbreviated naming, consider using a short name.
My intuition suggests that a vendor is rather selling products than rendering services, but I am completely unsure about how real and how essential this difference is.
Is it appropriate to replace’service provider’ with’vendor’ for reasons of brevity in this and other case?
Thank you
for your contribution to AfriRising.
In American English business lingo, vendor can range from a hot dog vendor to a Hewlett Packard or a Microsoft. As a vendor, the vendors can sell products and/or provide services. In the United States, VENDORS would be a perfectly acceptable choice for database table name, both in the back-end and in the UI. COMPANIES would also work, as would PROVIDERS. If you need a table for someone that sells photography equipment or related components, the company would be called
SUPPLIERS.
What is a hot dog vendor like? Who sells goods?
What is a service provider? My definition of service provider is more like the Internet provider? Which company provides the cables and wires to make those services available to you.
Does photographers services providers exist? Yes, they take photos for you, but you get a product back, being the pictures. You can buy a few of the things they sell you.
Is a table name a bad word? Etc. And then have a column which would indicate if they are available for companies.
