SAS retains column names
when it reads data from DBMS tables unless a column name contains
characters that SAS does not allow, such as
$
or
@
.
SAS allows alphanumeric characters and the underscore (_).
This option is intended
primarily for National Language Support, notably converting kanji
to English characters. English characters that are converted from
kanji are often those that SAS does not allow. Although this option
works for the single-byte character set (SBCS) version of SAS, SAS
ignores it in the double-byte character set (DBCS) version. So if
you have the DBCS version, you must first set VALIDVARNAME=ANY before
using your language characters as column variables.
In SAS 6, each
SAS/ACCESS
interface handled name collisions differently: Some appended at the
end of the name, some replaced one or more final characters in the
name, some used a single sequence number, and still others used unique
counters. When you specify VALIDVARNAME=V6, SAS handles name collisions
as it did in SAS 6.