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[Marilyn Hunter]

We are creating our new Azure SQL server for our upgrade to GP2018.  Our server naming convention includes hyphens in the server name.  I have always been told to stay away from special characters with SQL and GP but is there any reason the server name should not include hyphens?

Thanks,
Marilyn

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Marilyn Hunter
BCforward
Indianapolis IN
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[Kevin Droz]

No issues, we have used them since SQL 2008 and GP 2010. We are currently running 2018 R2

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Kevin
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[Jo deRuiter]

Hi

The “Special Characters” usually refers to !@#$%^&*(){}][|/?<>, etc but hyphens are never an issue.

?

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[Tom Monfre]

We have had hyphens in our server names for quite a few years and haven’t had any issues.  One thing to note is how you reference the server name when you have a query from a different SQL server.  You have to wrap the server name in square brackets [] otherwise you will get an error in your SQL query.  For example;
select * from [SQL-SERVER].DATABASE.DBO.TABLE.

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Tom Monfre
Batteries Plus Bulbs, LLC
Hartland WI
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[Jeff Pfershy]

There may be one gotcha (from the voice of experience!). What we typically refer to as hyphens can either be an ‘En dash’ or an ‘Em dash’, and SQL recognizes them differently since they have different values behind the scenes.

Some Microsoft products will automatically convert an En dash to an Em dash, such as in Word when you type a space then a letter after a dash.

This could trip you up when the ‘other’ dash is used in a server name, database name, object name, etc.. I know because an Em dash caused all manner of heartache when administering a SharePoint SQL server with 40+ databases some time ago.

An unambiguous alternative would be to use an underscore 🙂

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Jeff Pfershy
Sr Business Analyst
BluJay Solutions Inc
Holland MI
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[Marilyn Hunter]

Thank you so much for all the responses.  I love being able to get a variety of opinions.  I am giving all this info to our IT team.

Marilyn

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Marilyn Hunter
BCforward
Indianapolis IN
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[Kerry Hataley]

Good Afternoon Marilyn,

Sorry for being late to the game, but I was at Summit Austrialia speaking on Dynamics GP and all things SQL…

There are specific rule as defined by Microsoft for naming conventions and requirements in SQL server.
Specifically for Regular Identifiers. (Names fro entities, Stored Procs etc).
When an identifier doesn’t comply with all the rules they must be delimited. Meaning in brackets [] or quotes “” depending on the t-sql circumstance.

Now Dynamics GP does do handle some delimitation correctly, but most vendors and home made T-SQL is not correctly developed or written as delimited code.

The rules are as follows:
1. Beginning character must be Unicode Standard 3.2 (a-Z) for english
2. Subsequent characters can include:

• Letters as defined in the Unicode Standard 3.2.
• Decimal numbers
• The at sign (@), dollar sign ($), number sign (#), or underscore (_) are allowed
• Cant be a T-SQL reserved word (ADD, BEGIN etc)

You can reference this from Microsoft Docs:
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sql/relational-databases/databases/database-identifiers?view=sql-server-2017

So NO it is highly suggested that a HYPEN not be used.

I did just notice that you are referring to the Server name and not the database name, if you have linked servers or other ODATA type connections this is also a consideration.
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Kerry Hataley
CEO & President
Nanook Software, Inc
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[Jeff Pfershy]

Thanks for going deep on this one. Your detailed response and the MS link you provided are great reference material!?

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Jeff Pfershy
Sr Business Analyst
BluJay Solutions Inc
Holland MI
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