Renaming DBMS Data

Renaming SAS/ACCESS Tables

You can rename DBMS tables and views using the CHANGE statement, as shown in this example.

proc datasets lib=x;
  change oldtable=newtable;
quit;

You can rename tables using this method for all SAS/ACCESS engines. However, if you change a table name, any view that depends on that table no longer works unless the view references the new table name.

Renaming SAS/ACCESS Columns

You can use the RENAME statement to rename the 8-character default SAS variable names to long DBMS column names when you load the data into a DBMS table. You can also use the SAS data set option RENAME= to rename the columns after they are loaded into the DBMS.

Last updated: February 3, 2026