Enterprise guide: change encoding using custom configuration file

[Matyas]

I would like to change default encoding for Enterprise guide 8.3 to be UTF8 (instead of wlatin). I know it could be done with the change in the configuration file (Program Files\SASHome\SASFoundation\x.x\sasv9.cfg), but I am not allowed to change this file.

SAS could be run with the -CONFIG flag referencing to custom configuration file. Is something similar possible using enterprise guide? Can I create custom config file that would be run when starting EG or is there any other possibility without changing the original configuration file?

[gwootton]

I might consider asking your SAS Administrator to create a unicode context for you to use:

Create Unicode Application Server Context
https://go.documentation.sas.com/doc/en/bicdc/9.4/biasag/n10001intelplatform00srvradm.htm#p0x4ziblwb...

[Matyas]

Thank you, Greg. I don't know what the "context" principle means within SAS and how to work with it. I will try to find out if it's possible to do this in our company. However, I was hoping that it could be done more easily. After all, it's just a matter of running SAS with a different configuration file, and I would expect that this setting would be accessible directly from EG rather than having to manually overwrite configuration files.

[Patrick · Accepted solution]

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@Matyas wrote:
Thank you, Greg. I don't know what the "context" principle means within SAS and how to work with it. I will try to find out if it's possible to do this in our company. However, I was hoping that it could be done more easily. After all, it's just a matter of running SAS with a different configuration file, and I would expect that this setting would be accessible directly from EG rather than having to manually overwrite configuration files.

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What you're missing here is that EG is only the client that sends code to a SAS server for execution. It's on the server side where you need to set the encoding. And there are even different sets of SAS binaries for single byte and multibyte environment so this change is potentially even a bit more involved than just changing some default. 

What's applicable to you depends on how things are configured at your site and you really need to request this from the SAS Admin at your site. 

More recent SAS version use per default multibyte/UTF8 so someone must have made a decisions to change the default - but it's always possible to configure different contexts as already mentioned. But this is a SAS Admin/install&config task. 

[Kurt_Bremser]

If you have a fully local SAS installation (which means you use the "Local" server connection from within EG), but do not have administrator privileges on your PC, then you need one of the admin people of your company/institution (or the one who installed SAS in the first place) to make the change for you.

If you connect to anything other than "Local" (most likely "SASApp"), you use a remote server, and the admin of that server needs to provide a UTF-8 capable SAS application server context for you.