Best practices
The most important best practice is to create an entity relationship model before you start in Appian. It is not a problem to make minor changes, as you have seen, but without good preparation, you may have to recreate large parts of your CDTs and records.
The second best practice is the naming convention. In Appian, each field has a defined type. This type is visible in all places. Do not add the data type itself into the field name. Then, give the primary key field the same name in all CDTs. I use id for that. A field, referring to the primary key of another CDT, gets the name by following this pattern:
<nameOfOtherCdt>Id
Finally, keep the logic out of the database. From a pure Appian perspective, the database is just another integration, much like an integration with a SalesForce system or SAP. Try to implement most logic in Appian to reduce the complexity of your overall development.
