SAS/ACCESS 9.2 for Relational Databases: Reference, Fourth Edition

424 VALIDVARNAME= System Option 4 Chapter 12Details That are Specific to SAS/ACCESSVALIDVARNAME= enables you to control which rules apply for SAS variable names.For more information about the VALIDVARNAME= system option, see the SASLanguage Reference: Dictionary. Here are the valid settings.VALIDVARNAME=V7indicates that a DBMS column name is changed to a valid SAS name by usingthese rules:3 Up to 32 mixed-case alphanumeric characters are allowed.3 Names must begin with an alphabetic character or an underscore.3 Invalid characters are changed to underscores.3 Any column name that is not unique when it is normalized is made unique byappending a counter (0,1,2,...) to the name.This is the default value for SAS 7 and later.VALIDVARNAME=UPCASEindicates that a DBMS column name is changed to a valid SAS name as describedin VALIDVARNAME=V7 except that variable names are in uppercase.VALIDVARNAME=ANYallows any characters in DBMS column names to appear as valid characters inSAS variable names. Symbols, such as the equal sign (=) and the asterisk (*), mustbe contained in a ’variable-name’n construct. You must use ANY whenever youwant to read DBMS column names that do not follow the SAS naming conventions.ExampleThis example shows how the SQL pass-through facility works withVALIDVARNAME=V6.options validvarname=v6;proc sql;connect to oracle (user=testuser pass=testpass);create view myview asselect amount_b, amount_sfrom connection to oracle(select "Amount Budgeted$", "Amount Spent$"from mytable);quit;proc contents data=myview;run;Output from this example would show that "Amount Budgeted$" becomesAMOUNT_B and "Amount Spent$" becomes AMOUNT_S.See Also“Introduction to SAS/ACCESS Naming” on page 11