The ACCESS Procedure for Relational Databases FORMAT Statement 301
DROP Statement
Drops a column so that it cannot be selected in a view descriptor
Applies to: access and view descriptors
Interacts with:
RESET, SELECT
DROP <’>column-identifier-1<’> <…<’>column-identifier-n<’>>;
column-identifier
specifies the column name or the positional equivalent from the LIST statement,
which is the number that represents the column’s place in the access descriptor. For
example, to drop the third and fifth columns, submit the following statement:
drop 3 5;
Details
The DROP statement drops the specified column(s) from a descriptor. You can drop
a column when creating or updating an access descriptor; you can also drop a column
when updating a view descriptor. If you drop a column when creating an access
descriptor, you cannot select that column when creating a view descriptor that is based
on the access descriptor. The underlying DBMS table is unaffected by this statement.
To display a column that was previously dropped, specify that column name in the
RESET statement. However, doing so also resets all the column’s attributes (such as
SAS variable name, format, and so on) to their default values.
FORMAT Statement
Changes a SAS format for a DBMS column
Applies to:
access descriptor or view descriptor
Interacts with:
ASSIGN, DROP, RESET
FORMAT <’>column-identifier-1<’> <=>SAS-format-name-1
<…<’>column-identifier-n<’> <=> SAS-format-name-n>;
column-identifier
specifies the column name or the positional equivalent from the LIST statement,
which is the number that represents the column’s place in the access descriptor. If
the column name contains lowercase characters, special characters, or national
characters, enclose the name in quotation makrs.
SAS-format-name
specifies the SAS format to be used.
