"Its not inconsistent. SAS and SQL are two separate entities. SAS merely implements a procedure to wrap around ANSI SQL - which do not have these warnings and such like. Due to the differences in the way the two software works, there is differences in use." I understand. However SAS could also implement a procedure that flags these length mismatches. "These things should not have been in the code in first place. A well documented, modeled approach would have resolved these issues at development time. Things like turning system options off is not a good solution." I agree, they shouldn't be there in the first place, but they are and they now need fixing. To defend the long since gone developers, these problems didn't generate warnings when they were first created, plus they might have actually been created by updates to other systems. I don't see the difference between turning a system option off and forcing a length change via SQL personally, both are ultimately hiding a problem. "I do not work for SAS, I cannot tell you. If it was me, I would be looking at the process as a whole, look through the detailed documentation and data modelling you will have, as part of the migration and include a block of changes/updates to incorporate the latest software updates into the code/model. I suspect if the code was written under V8, then it could do with a more or less total rebuild as that is very old. Lifecycle management at the end of the day." The process is vast (hundreds of thousands of lines of code) and legacy - >25 years old, however it's worked well all that time - no application is perfect after all but it is a trusted application. The decision has been to upgrade (due to server issues primarily) and SAS thankfully is backward compatible so very few issues have arisen. A total rebuild would be expensive, time consuming and would probably result in an application with less functionality than the existing one. A difficult thing to sell! Ripping it up and starting again isn't usually a sensible approach. Thanks for your help, the explanations have helped clarify things.
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