Naming Conventions for Vertica

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

Most SAS names can be up to 32 characters long. The Vertica interface supports table names and column names that contain up to 32 characters. If DBMS column names are longer than 32 characters, they are truncated to 32 characters. If truncating a column name would result in identical names, SAS generates a unique name by replacing the last character with a number. DBMS table names must be 32 characters or less. SAS does not truncate a longer name. If you already have a table name that is greater than 32 characters, it is recommended that you create a table view.

The PRESERVE_TAB_NAMES= and PRESERVE_COL_NAMES= options determine how this interface handles case sensitivity, spaces, and special characters. (For information about these options, see LIBNAME Statement for Relational Databases.) Vertica is not case sensitive, and all names default to lowercase.

Vertica objects include tables, views, and columns. Follow these naming conventions:

• A name must be from 1 to 128 characters long.
• A name must begin with a letter (A through Z), diacritic marks, or non-Latin characters (200-377 octal)
• A name cannot begin with an underscore (_). Leading underscores are reserved for system objects.
• Names are not case sensitive. For example, CUSTOMER and Customer are the same, but object names are converted to lowercase when they are stored in the Vertica database. However, if you enclose a name in quotation marks, it is case sensitive.
• A name cannot be a Vertica reserved word, such as WHERE or VIEW.
• A name cannot be the same as another Vertica object that has the same type.