Naming Conventions for SAP ASE

For general information, see SAS Names and Support for DBMS Names.

SAP ASE database objects include tables, views, columns, indexes, and database procedures. They follow these naming conventions.

• A name must be from 1 to 30 characters long—or 28 characters, if you enclose the name in quotation marks.
• A name must begin with an alphabetic character (A to Z) or an underscore (_) unless you enclose the name in quotation marks.
• After the first character, a name can contain letters (A to Z) in uppercase or lowercase, numbers from 0 to 9, underscore (_), dollar sign ($), number sign (#), at sign (@), yen sign (¥), and monetary pound sign (£).
• Embedded spaces are not allowed unless you enclose the name in quotation marks.
• Embedded quotation marks are not allowed.
• Case sensitivity is specified when a server is installed. By default, the names of database objects are case sensitive. For example, the names CUSTOMER and customer are different on a case-sensitive server.
• By default, SAP ASE does not enclose column names and table names in quotations marks. To enclose these in quotation marks, you must use the QUOTED_IDENTIFIER= LIBNAME option when you assign a libref.
• When you use the DATASETS procedure to list your SAP ASE tables, the table names appear exactly as they exist in the SAP ASE data dictionary. If you specified the SCHEMA= LIBNAME option, SAS/ACCESS lists the tables for the specified schema user name.
• To reference a table or other named object that you own, or for the specified schema, use the table name (for example, CUSTOMERS). If you use the DBLINK= LIBNAME option, all references to the libref refer to the specified database.
• A name cannot be a reserved word in SAP ASE unless the name is enclosed in quotation marks. See your SAP ASE documentation for more information about reserved words.
• 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.