SAS/ACCESS Software for Relational Databases: Reference

SYBASE Naming Conventions

SYBASE database objects that can be named include tables, views, columns, indexes, and database procedures. Use the following SYBASE naming conventions:

A name must be from 1 to 30 characters long (or 28 characters if quoted).
A name must start with an alphabetic character, unless the name is surrounded by quotation marks.
After the first character, a name may contain the letters A through Z (in uppercase or lowercase), the digits 0 through 9, the underscore (_), the dollar sign ($), the pound sign (#), the at sign (@), the yen sign (¥), and the monetary pound sign (£). If you use any of these characters, enclose the name in quotation marks.
Embedded spaces are not permitted unless the name is surrounded by quotation marks.
Embedded quotation marks are not permitted.
A name cannot be a SYBASE reserved word unless the name is surrounded by quotation marks. See your SYBASE documentation for more information about reserved words.
Case sensitivity is set when a server is installed. By default, the names of database objects are case sensitive. On a case-sensitive server, the names CUSTOMER and customer are different.
Database names must be unique. For each owner within a database, names of database objects must be unique. Column names and index names must be unique within a table.

Note: By default, column and table names are notquoted in the SAS/ACCESS Interface to SYBASE. To quote the table and column names, you must use the LIBNAME statement QUOTED_IDENTIFIER= option when you assign a libref. [cautionend]

When you use the DATASETS procedure to list your SYBASE tables, the table names appear exactly as they exist in the SYBASE data dictionary. If you specified the LIBNAME option, SCHEMA= , SAS/ACCESS lists the tables for the specified schema username.

To reference a table or other named object that you own or for the specified schema, refer to the table name (for example, CUSTOMERS). If you use the LIBNAME statement DBLINK= option, all references to the libref will refer to the specified database.

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