ERROR: Unable to transcode data.

[Ying]

It is very interesting when I pull data from Netezza.  I got message 'ERROR: Unable to transcode data'.   For what I see, the char variable are defined with big length such as $1000.  If I use TRIM(var1) as var_1 length=20 for example, the message went way and I can pull this variable without a problem, but this solution doesn't solve the issues for other variables that have the same error message.  Does anyone else have the same problem before?

Thank you!

Yvonne

[SASKiwi · Accepted solution]

This is a known problem. What version and maintenance release of SAS are you using - compare it to the versions in this link:

http://support.sas.com/kb/59/905.html

[Ying]

Thank you, SASKiwi!  

Yes, I submited a ticket to IT people but just curious why I can read some variables that have error by shorten their length. 

[SASKiwi]

The link shows some SAS releases have a fix that can be applied. This is the best way to fix the problem.

[Jagadishkatam]

Could you please show the proc contents output to see the encoding of the dataset.

[Ying]

Here are the partial contents from SAS 

The CONTENTS Procedure

Data Set Name        address          Observations          .
Member Type          DATA             Variables             60
Engine               NETEZZA          Indexes               0
Created              .                Observation Length    0
Last Modified        .                Deleted Observations  0
Protection                            Compressed            NO
Data Set Type                         Sorted                NO
Label
Data Representation  Default
Encoding             Default


                         Variables in Creation Order

 #    Variable      Type     Len    Format    Informat
                                            
 4    address_1      Char    1000    $1000.    $1000.
 5    address_2      Char    1000    $1000.    $1000.
 6    city           Char    1000    $1000.    $1000.
 7    state          Char     200    $200.     $200.
 8    postal         Char     200    $200.     $200.
 9    county         Char      80    $80.      $80.
10    country        Char      12    $12.      $12.