topic oracle tables access with special chars in SAS Programming

oracle tables access with special chars

MarkNicholas — Wed, 23 Aug 2017 14:30:38 GMT

hi Guys,
I have an issue while accessing tables with characters like $ in their names
for example, the below one works well with SAS datasets

proc contents data=abc.'au$co_auth$fc'n;
run;

proc sql;
select * from abc.'au$co_auth$fc'n;
quit;

But if abc refers to ORACLE libname, I get error as below

I now get the new error message reading: ERROR: The value 'AU$CO_AUTH$FC'n is not a valid SAS name.

Please help how I can access such datasets. Thanks.

Cheers
Mark

Re: oracle tables access with special chars

kiranv_ — Wed, 23 Aug 2017 15:28:09 GMT

I think yoi need to havepreserve_tab_names=yes; in your libname statement and then your logic should work or please try something like this below

libname mydblib oracle user=testuser password=testpass
preserve_tab_names=yes;
proc sql dquote=ansi;
select * from mydblib."my table";

this was taken from

http://support.sas.com/documentation/cdl/en/acreldb/63647/HTML/default/viewer.htm#a001342346.htm

Re: oracle tables access with special chars

MarkNicholas — Thu, 24 Aug 2017 02:15:23 GMT

The above did not work. This time we get error the table cannot be found. Pls help

Re: oracle tables access with special chars

kiranv_ — Thu, 24 Aug 2017 02:22:33 GMT

first check whether you are able to access other tables in this particular libname. try out explicit pass through also. I would also like to know expert opinion of @LinusH on this topic

Re: oracle tables access with special chars

alexal — Thu, 24 Aug 2017 02:50:23 GMT

The PRESERVE_COL_NAMES= and PRESERVE_TAB_NAMES= LIBNAME options determine how SAS/ACCESS Interface to Oracle handles case sensitivity, spaces, and special characters. Please use both of them in LIBNAME. Also, I do not see that you have specified SCHEMA=. SCHEMA= specifies the name that is assigned to a logical classification of objects in a relational database.

Re: oracle tables access with special chars

ChrisNZ — Thu, 24 Aug 2017 03:24:26 GMT

Another option is to use passthru:

proc sql;
  connect using ORALIB;
  select * from connection to ORALIB ( select * from CRAZYTABLENAME );
quit;

The stuff between the parentheses is oracle syntax.

Re: oracle tables access with special chars

LinusH — Thu, 24 Aug 2017 11:33:20 GMT

Thanks @kiranv_. Not sure I can add to what have been already said.

But I can't stop wonder why people make it so complicated. Because you can, it doesn't mean it's a good idea to have table/column names with special/national/space chars etc. If you can't have the DBA rename things, perhaps creating views that comply with SAS naming standards is one way around it.

Assume one way of handling is not to preserve names, and then use _ (haven't tested though).