Maintaining Environments

SAS System Options and SAS/Warehouse Administrator

When using SAS/Warehouse Administrator, the attributes of the underlying SAS session must be appropriate for the tasks you want to perform. This topic describes the impact of some SAS options on SAS/Warehouse Administrator.

Note: For full details about a SAS option, see the SAS Language Reference: Dictionary. [cautionend]

VALIDVARNAME= Option

The SAS option VALIDVARNAME= controls the type of SAS column names that can be used and created during a SAS session.

VALIDVARNAME=v6: enforces Version 6 rules for SAS names, where the maximum length is eight characters; all letters are displayed in uppercase, regardless of how they are entered; and maximum width for character columns is 200 characters.
VALIDVARNAME=v7: enforces Version 7 rules for SAS names, where the maximum length is 32 characters; letters entered in mixed case are displayed in mixed case; and maximum width for character columns is 32,767 characters. This is the default for SAS/Warehouse Administrator.
VALIDVARNAME=UPCASE: enforces same rules as VALIDVARNAME=V7, except that all letters are displayed in uppercase, regardless of how they are entered.
VALIDVARNAME=ANY: is not supported in SAS/Warehouse Administrator.

To specify the VALIDVARNAME= option, include the appropriate statement in a SAS invocation, a SAS autoexec file, or a SAS configuration file as follows:

option validvarname=option;

Note: For details about the VALIDVARNAME= system option, see the SAS Language Reference: Dictionary. [cautionend]

Using VALIDVARNAME=

By default, SAS/Warehouse Administrator Release 2.0 supports 32-byte, mixed-case column names. When entering metadata for a SAS data store name (table, view, or MDDB), for a column in a SAS data store, or for a SAS catalog or catalog entry, the names can now be up to 32 bytes long, and the letters in the name can be entered in mixed-case.

Note: SAS will not let you specify two names that differ only in case. [cautionend]

For example, SAS/Warehouse Administrator will not let you specify a column abc and a column ABC in the same table. Accordingly, when you specify SAS column names in SAS/Warehouse Administrator, do not specify two names that only differ in case.

Note: SAS librefs and filerefs are still limited to a maximum of eight characters. [cautionend]

In addition to its effect on SAS names, the VALIDVARNAME= option can have other significant impacts in a SAS/Warehouse Administrator session. For example,

if you have warehouse data stores in DBMS format, the VALIDVARNAME= option determines the rules for mapping DBMS column names to SAS column names, or vice versa. For details, see the VALIDVARNAME= option in the SAS/ACCESS documentation for the DBMS.
the VALIDVARNAME= option can also have impacts on SAS/CONNECT software and PROC SQL Pass-Through views. For details, see the VALIDVARNAME= option in the documentation for these items.

In general, use the default (VALIDVARNAME=v7) when you are specifying metadata for warehouse data that will reside on a SAS Version 7 or later host, and you would like to take advantage of long, mixed-case column names.

Alternatively, if all of your warehouse data will be stored on SAS Version 6 hosts, you might consider using the VALIDVARNAME=v6 option in your SAS/Warehouse Administrator session, which will not allow you to specify SAS column names that will not work on Version 6 hosts.

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