Currency codes - ISO 4217

You can be sure that if I find any other strings than ISO 4217 in databases and enums, I'll be disappointed and pissed.

This table is extremely stable.

• The currency codes themselves have never been modified (never been renamed)
• The only modifications are the associations between a currency code, and countries that use that currency (some countries adopted some other currencies, rather than their own)

Data modelling recommendation

Create a dedicated dimension table for currency codes, and use it throughout the codebase.

Use the standard integer currency code number as primary key. Do not use a separate auto-incremented column as primary key (eg - id SERIAL PRIMARY KEY). This will lead to recognisable uniformity across the codebase, when this currency code number is used as foreign key (over time, you tend to learn the currency codes and their numbers).

Example schema (postgres):

CREATE TABLE CURRENCY_CODES(
    number INT PRIMARY KEY,
    code VARCHAR(3) NOT NULL
)

Current values as of 1 May 2024

Reference Links

• iso.org - ISO 4217
• wikipedia - ISO 4217