10 Options that Affect SAS/ACCESS Naming Behavior Chapter 2
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” on page 112 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” on page 113 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.
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” on page 225 for information about this option.
The availablity of these options and their default settings are DBMS-specific, so consult
the SAS/ACCESS documentation for your DBMS to learn how the SAS/ACCESS engine
for your DBMS processes names.
Naming Behavior When Retrieving DBMS Data
The following two tables illustrate how SAS/ACCESS processes DBMS names when
retrieving data from a DBMS. This information applies generally; in some cases it is
not necessary to specify these options (because option default values are
DBMS-specific). See the documentation for your SAS/ACCESS interface for details.
