Is there any place in which I can find a list of invalid database characters for ArcGIS 10?
I am guessing you are referring to "Reserved Words" and special characters. Take a look at the following links, but ultimately reserved words and reserved characters are going to be more DATABASE (shapefile, MS Access, Oracle, SQL Server, etc) dependent vs ARCGIS dependent.
ESRI KB- What characters should not be used in ArcGIS for field names and table names?
ESRI Forum- .dbf files/naming conventions
ESRI Blog- Words (by Reservation Only)
I don't know about a definitive, complete list, because it depends on the DBMS, but ArcObjects and arcpy/arcgisscripting have functions for helping you write valid SQL queries and validate table/field names. ArcObjects also has DBMS-specific invalid character lists.
GP methods:
- ValidateFieldName
- ValidateTableName
- AddFieldDelimiters
ArcObjects methods:
- ISQLSyntax.GetSpecialCharacter
- ISQLSyntax.GetInvalidCharacters
- ISQLSyntax.GetInvalidStartingCharacters
- IFieldChecker.Validate
- IFieldChecker.ValidateField
- IFieldChecker.ValidateTableName
- IGeoProcessor.ValidateFieldName
- IGeoProcessor.ValidateTableName
From personal experience you should make sure that names (1) begin with a letter, (2) contain no spaces, (3) contain 7 or fewer characters, and (4) only use alphanumeric characters.