Naming Conventions for SAP HANA

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

Most SAS names can be up to 32 characters long. The SAP HANA 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_COL_NAMES= and PRESERVE_TAB_NAMES= options determine how SAS/ACCESS Interface to SAP HANA handles case sensitivity. Although SAP HANA is not case–sensitive, all names are stored in uppercase if you do not enclose them in double quotation marks. These options also control whether you can use an SAP HANA reserved word as an identifier. For more information about these options, see LIBNAME Statement for Relational Databases.

SAP HANA objects include tables, views, synonyms, columns, indexes, functions, procedures, users, roles, and more. To represent names for these objects in the SQL statement, SAP HANA uses delimited identifiers and undelimited identifiers. An undelimited identifier represents an undelimited table or column name.

Follow these naming conventions:

• An identifier must be from 1 to 127 characters long.
• An undelimited name must begin with a letter (A through Z). It cannot contain any symbols except digits or an underscore (_).
• A delimited name must be enclosed within the double quotation (") delimiter. It can contain any character, including special characters (for example, "AB$%CD").
• Names are not case sensitive. For example, CUSTOMER and Customer are the same, but object names are converted to uppercase when they are stored in the SAP HANA database. However, if you enclose a name in quotation marks, it is case sensitive.
• A name cannot be an SAP HANA reserved word.
  Note: If PRESERVE_COL_NAMES= is enabled (set to YES), then a column name can be a reserved word. Similarly, if PRESERVE_TAB_NAMES= is enabled (set to YES), then a table name can be a reserved word. By default, these options are disabled.
• A name cannot be the same as another SAP HANA object that has the same type.

For more information, see your SAP HANA documentation.