Previous Page | Next Page

SAS Names and Support for DBMS Names

Options That Affect SAS/ACCESS Naming Behavior

To change how SAS handles case-sensitive or nonstandard DBMS table and column names, specify one or more of the following options.

PRESERVE_COL_NAMES=YES

is a SAS/ACCESS LIBNAME and data set option that applies only to creating DBMS tables. When set to YES, this option preserves spaces, special characters, and mixed case in DBMS column names. See PRESERVE_COL_NAMES= LIBNAME Option for more information about this option.

PRESERVE_TAB_NAMES=YES

is a SAS/ACCESS LIBNAME option. When set to YES, this option preserves blank spaces, special characters, and mixed case in DBMS table names. See PRESERVE_TAB_NAMES= LIBNAME Option for more information about this option.

Note:   Specify the alias PRESERVE_NAMES=YES | NO if you plan to specify both the PRESERVE_COL_NAMES= and PRESERVE_TAB_NAMES= options in your LIBNAME statement. Using this alias saves time when you are coding.  [cautionend]

DQUOTE=ANSI

is a PROC SQL option. This option specifies whether PROC SQL treats values within double quotation marks as a character string or as a column name or table name. When you specify DQUOTE=ANSI, your SAS code can refer to DBMS names that contain characters and spaces that are not allowed by SAS naming conventions. Specifying DQUOTE=ANSI enables you to preserve special characters in table and column names in your SQL statements by enclosing the names in double quotation marks.

To preserve table names, you must also specify PRESERVE_TAB_NAMES=YES. To preserve column names when you create a table, you must also specify PRESERVE_COL_NAMES=YES.

VALIDVARNAME=ANY

is a global system option that can override the SAS naming conventions. See VALIDVARNAME= System Option for information about this option.

Examples that use these options are available. The availability of these options and their default settings are DBMS-specific, so see the SAS/ACCESS documentation for your DBMS to learn how the SAS/ACCESS engine for your DBMS processes names.

Previous Page | Next Page | Top of Page

Copyright © 2010 by SAS Institute Inc., Cary, NC, USA. All rights reserved.