SAS/ACCESS Interface to Oracle

Naming Conventions for Oracle

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

The PRESERVE_COL_NAMES= and PRESERVE_TAB_NAMES= LIBNAME options determine how SAS/ACCESS Interface to Oracle handles case sensitivity, spaces, and special characters. For information about these options, see Overview of the LIBNAME Statement for Relational Databases.

You can name such Oracle objects as tables, views, columns, and indexes. For the Oracle 7 Server, objects also include database triggers, procedures, and stored functions. They follow these naming conventions.

A name must be from 1 to 30 characters long. Database names are limited to 8 characters, and link names are limited to 128 characters.
A name must begin with a letter. However, if you enclose the name in double quotation marks, it can begin with any character.
A name can contain the letters A through Z, the digits 0 through 9, the underscore (_), $, and #. If the name appears within double quotation marks, it can contain any characters, except double quotation marks.
Names are not case sensitive. For example, CUSTOMER and Customer are the same. However, if you enclose an object names in double quotation marks, it is case sensitive.
A name cannot be an Oracle reserved word.
A name cannot be the same as another Oracle object in the same schema.

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