Identifiers

Identifiers have a maximum length of 128 bytes. Enclose an identifier in double quotes, square brackets, or back quotes (`...`) if any of the following conditions are true:

The identifier contains spaces.
The first character of the identifier is not an alphabetic character.
The identifier is a reserved word.
The identifier contains characters other than alphabetic characters and digits.

Alphabetic characters include the alphabet, the underscore character (_), at sign (@), number sign (#), and dollar sign ($). The database collation sequence dictates which characters are considered alphabetic or digit characters.

The following characters are not permitted in identifiers:

Double quotes
Control characters (any character less than 0x20)
Backslashes
Square brackets
Back quotes

Note

If you are reloading a database that is of an earlier version than 16.0, remove any square brackets or back quotes in identifiers; otherwise, the reload fails.

If the quoted_identifier database option is set to Off, double quotes are used to delimit SQL strings and cannot be used for identifiers. However, you can use square brackets or back quotes to delimit identifiers, regardless of the setting of quoted_identifier. The default setting for the quoted_identifier option is Off for Open Client and jConnect connections; otherwise, the default is On.

User IDs cannot:
- begin with white space, single quotes, or double quotes
- end with white space
- contain semicolons
Passwords are case-sensitive and they cannot:
- begin with white space, single quotes, or double quotes
- end with white space
- contain semicolons
- be longer than 255 bytes in length

SQL/2008 The ability to create identifiers of up to 128 characters is optional SQL language feature F391 of the SQL/2008 standard.

The following are all valid identifiers.

Surname
"Client Name"
`Client Name`
[Surname]
SomeBigName

Identifiers

Remarks

Note

Standards and compatibility

See also

Examples