SAS/ACCESS Interface to Sybase

Naming Conventions for Sybase

For general information about this feature, see SAS Names and Support for DBMS Names.

Sybase database objects include tables, views, columns, indexes, and database procedures. They follow these naming conventions.

A name must be from 1 to 30 characters long--or 28 characters, if you enclose the name in quotation marks.
A name must begin with an alphabetic character (A to Z) or an underscore (_) unless you enclose the name in quotation marks.
After the first character, a name can contain letters (A to Z) in uppercase or lowercase, numbers from 0 to 9, underscore (_), dollar sign ($), pound sign (#), at sign (@), yen sign (¥), and monetary pound sign (£).
Embedded spaces are not allowed unless you enclose the name in quotation marks.
Embedded quotation marks are not allowed.
Case sensitivity is set when a server is installed. By default, the names of database objects are case sensitive. For example, the names CUSTOMER and customer are different on a case-sensitive server.
A name cannot be a Sybase reserved word unless the name is enclosed in quotation marks. See your Sybase documentation for more information about reserved words.
Database names must be unique. For each owner within a database, names of database objects must be unique. Column names and index names must be unique within a table.

By default, Sybase does not enclose column names and table names in quotations marks. To enclose these in quotation marks, you must use the QUOTED_IDENTIFIER= LIBNAME option when you assign a libref.

When you use the DATASETS procedure to list your Sybase tables, the table names appear exactly as they exist in the Sybase data dictionary. If you specified the SCHEMA= LIBNAME option, SAS/ACCESS lists the tables for the specified schema user name.

To reference a table or other named object that you own, or for the specified schema, use the table name--for example, CUSTOMERS. If you use the DBLINK= LIBNAME option, all references to the libref refer to the specified database.

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