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

SAS/ACCESS Interface for Informix 4 Character Data 585option sastrace=’,,,d’;For more details about Informix locking, see your Informix documentation.Naming Conventions for InformixFor general information about this feature, see Chapter 2, “SAS Names and Supportfor DBMS Names,” on page 11.The PRESERVE_COL_NAMES= and PRESERVE_TAB_NAMES= LIBNAME optionsdetermine how SAS/ACCESS Interface to Informix handles case sensitivity, spaces, andspecial characters. For information about these options, see “Overview of theLIBNAME Statement for Relational Databases” on page 87.Informix objects include tables and columns. They follow these naming conventions.3 Although table and column names must be from 1 to 32 characters, the limitationon some Informix servers might be lower.3 Table and column names must begin with a letter or an underscore (_) that isfollowed by letters, numbers, or underscores. Special characters are not supported.However, if you enclose a name in quotation marks andPRESERVE_TAB_NAMES=YES (when applicable), it can begin with any character.Because several problems were found in the Informix ODBC driver that result fromusing uppercase or mixed case, Informix encourages users to use lowercase for table andcolumn names. Informix currently has no schedule for fixing these known problems.Data Types for InformixOverviewEvery column in a table has a name and a data type. The data type tells Informixhow much physical storage to set aside for the column and the form in which the datais stored. This section includes information about Informix data types, null values, anddata conversions.Character DataCHAR(n), NCHAR(n)contains character string data from 1 to 32,767 characters in length and caninclude tabs and spaces.VARCHAR(m,n), NVARCHAR(m,n)contains character string data from 1 to 255 characters in length.TEXTcontains unlimited text data, depending on memory capacity.BYTEcontains binary data of variable length.