If you run the METALIB procedure to update a table that contains indexes with names longer than 30 characters, the procedure truncates the index names to 30 characters. If this truncation causes duplicate index names (in other words, the first 30 characters are not unique for two or more indexes), the following error occurs:

 ERROR:  Read Access Violation In Task [ METALIB )  
 Exception occurred at (076D3914)
 Task Traceback
 Address   Frame     (DBGHELP API Version 4.0 rev 5)
 076D3914  077FF700  sasmetas:mcn_main+0x12914
 076D57EC  077FF758  sasmetas:mcn_main+0x147EC
 076CEA25  077FF9D0  sasmetas:mcn_main+0xDA25
 076CC8A2  077FFBDC  sasmetas:mcn_main+0xB8A2
 076C23A3  077FFF88  sasmetas:mcn_main+0x13A3
 01262B02  077FFFA0  sashost:Main+0xBE72
 01266C20  077FFFB4  sashost:Main+0xFF90
 7C80B683  077FFFEC  kernel32:GetModuleFileNameA+0x1B4

To work around this problem you must rename the indexes in the original data source such that they are either shorter than 30 characters, or that the first 30 characters are unique for all indexes.

Select the Hot Fix tab in this note to access the hot fix for this issue. After applying the hot fix, the maximum length for index names that can be registered by PROC METALIB will be 256 characters. However, other components of SAS or the DBMS might enforce a shorter length, causing the index name to be truncated. Whichever index name registered, either the full name or the truncated name, must be a unique name for all indexes.

Operating System and Release Information

A fix for SAS 9.1.3 (9.1 TS1M3) for this issue is available at:

A fix for SAS 9.1.3 (9.1 TS1M3) with Asian Language Support (DBCS) for this issue is available at: