Identifying Tables or Columns by Their Qualified Object Name

You can uniquely identify a table or column by adding other names that qualify it—the database name, owner’s name, and (for a column) the table or view name.

Each qualifier is separated from the next one by a period. For example:

database.owner.table_name.column_name

database.owner.view_name.column_name

[[database.]owner.]table_name

[[database.]owner.]view_name

• Using Delimited Identifiers Within an Object Name
  If you use set quoted_identifier on, you can use double quotes around individual parts of a qualified object name.
• Omitting the Owner Name
  You can omit the intermediate elements in a name and use dots to indicate their positions, as long as the system is given enough information to identify the object:
• Referencing Your Own Objects in the Current Database
  You need not use the database name or owner name to reference your own objects in the current database. The default value for owner is the current user, and the default value for database is the current database.
• Referencing Objects Owned by the Database Owner
  If you omit the owner name and you do not own an object by that name, the SAP ASE server looks for objects of that name owned by the Database Owner.
• Using Qualified Identifiers Consistently
  When qualifying a column name and table name in the same statement, be sure to use the same qualifying expressions for each; they are evaluated as strings and must match; otherwise, an error is returned.