Naming Conventions for Aster

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

Most SAS names can be up to 32 characters long. The Aster interface supports table names and column names that contain up to 32 characters. If column names are longer than 32 characters, they are truncated to 32 characters. If truncating a column name would result in identical column 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 name longer than 32 characters. If you 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.) Aster is not case sensitive, so all names default to lowercase.

Aster objects include tables, views, and columns. They follow these conventions.

• A name must be from 1 to 64 characters long.
• A name must begin with a letter (A through Z), diacritic marks, non-Latin characters (200–377 octal) or an underscore (_).
• To enable case sensitivity, enclose names in quotation marks. All references to quoted names must be enclosed in quotation marks and preserve case sensitivity.
• A name cannot begin with a _bee prefix. Leading _bee prefixes are reserved for system objects.
• A name cannot be a reserved word in Aster such as WHERE or VIEW.
• A name cannot be the same as another Aster object that has the same type.