Macro Variables and System Options for Relational Databases

VALIDVARNAME= System Option

Controls the type of SAS variable names that can be used or created during a SAS session.

Default value:	V7
Valid in:	configuration file, SAS invocation, OPTIONS statement, SAS System Options window

Syntax
Details That are Specific to SAS/ACCESS
Example
See Also

Syntax

VALIDVARNAME= V7 | UPCASE | ANY

Details That are Specific to SAS/ACCESS

VALIDVARNAME= enables you to control which rules apply for SAS variable names. For more information about the VALIDVARNAME= system option, see the SAS Language Reference: Dictionary. Here are the valid settings.

VALIDVARNAME=V7

indicates that a DBMS column name is changed to a valid SAS name by using these rules:

Up to 32 mixed-case alphanumeric characters are allowed.
Names must begin with an alphabetic character or an underscore.
Invalid characters are changed to underscores.
Any column name that is not unique when it is normalized is made unique by appending a counter (0,1,2,...) to the name.

This is the default value for SAS 7 and later.

VALIDVARNAME=UPCASE

indicates that a DBMS column name is changed to a valid SAS name as described in VALIDVARNAME=V7 except that variable names are in uppercase.

VALIDVARNAME=ANY

allows any characters in DBMS column names to appear as valid characters in SAS variable names. Symbols, such as the equal sign (=) and the asterisk (*), must be contained in a 'variable-name'n construct. You must use ANY whenever you want to read DBMS column names that do not follow the SAS naming conventions.

Example

This example shows how the SQL pass-through facility works with VALIDVARNAME=V6.

options validvarname=v6;
proc sql;
   connect to oracle (user=testuser pass=testpass);
   create view myview as
     select amount_b, amount_s
       from connection to oracle
         (select "Amount Budgeted$", "Amount Spent$"
            from mytable);
quit;

proc contents data=myview;
run;

Output from this example would show that "Amount Budgeted$" becomes AMOUNT_B and "Amount Spent$" becomes AMOUNT_S.