topic Sas to odbc special characters in SAS Programming

Sas to odbc special characters

NN — Thu, 15 Nov 2018 20:15:03 GMT

Hi everyone,
I have a process where we use proc import (dbms=xlsx) to import an excel file.
We then use libanme ODBC to connect to an SQL server and create the imported table in SQLserver.

Now one of the columns in the excel has values with special characters like the circle bullet symbol.

When we import the excel into sas we can see the bullet in the sas dataset.
But when we transfer the data to the SQL server the bullet changes to a sort of right arrow -> .

We are on sas Unix environment with Latin1 encoding. I don't have the option of starting a session with UTF8 encoding.
Is there any other solution that I can try to fix this issue?

Re: Sas to odbc special characters

Reeza — Thu, 15 Nov 2018 20:34:20 GMT

@NN wrote:
Hi everyone,
I have a process where we use proc import (dbms=xlsx) to import an excel file.
We then use libanme ODBC to connect to an SQL server and create the imported table in SQLserver.

Now one of the columns in the excel has values with special characters like the circle bullet symbol.

When we import the excel into sas we can see the bullet in the sas dataset.
But when we transfer the data to the SQL server the bullet changes to a sort of right arrow -> .

We are on sas Unix environment with Latin1 encoding. I don't have the option of starting a session with UTF8 encoding.
Is there any other solution that I can try to fix this issue?

What does that represent in the Excel spreadsheet, what should it be?

Re: Sas to odbc special characters

NN — Thu, 15 Nov 2018 20:46:36 GMT

So on the excel I have a column B
And in one of the cells let's say {B2}, I have values like
• point1
• point2
• point3
The round bullet before the word point appears correct when imported into sas dataset .
But when the Sas dataset is used to create the data on SQL server the bullet appears as -> instead of •

Re: Sas to odbc special characters

VDD — Thu, 15 Nov 2018 20:56:30 GMT

are you sure that it is SAS and not SQL that is changing your char(7) or char(149) into this ->

Re: Sas to odbc special characters

NN — Thu, 15 Nov 2018 21:21:15 GMT

I am honestly not sure if it's the SQL which is changing it.
I have used the condition Dbtype=nvarchar for the variable while setting the sas dataset to sql.

Also if I was to use a session with UTF8 encoding then these characters get transferred correctly.
But I am trying to see if there is any solution available while using the Latin1 session itself.

Re: Sas to odbc special characters INENCODING= and OUTENCODING= options?

ChrisNZ — Thu, 15 Nov 2018 21:36:22 GMT

Just an idea. Have you tried using the INENCODING= and OUTENCODING= options?

Re: Sas to odbc special characters

SuryaKiran — Thu, 15 Nov 2018 21:47:00 GMT

I guess your SAS and SQL Server needs to have same encoding.

Re: Sas to odbc special characters

NN — Tue, 20 Nov 2018 07:22:39 GMT

I am using libname odbc , hence the inecoding and outencoding may not work

Re: Sas to odbc special characters

NN — Tue, 20 Nov 2018 07:27:08 GMT

Hi Surya,
Can you guide , how can I check the SQLserver encoding.?

Re: Sas to odbc special characters

SuryaKiran — Tue, 20 Nov 2018 14:17:07 GMT

Try this: SELECT SERVERPROPERTY('Collation')