Thanks to all for replying. I've learned quite a bit from this discussion. That was actually a question I was just about to ask (local vs client/server setup). I've previously worked with SAS metadata server and figured the management console would not be a solution for me this time as I'm currently on just a local server setup. I'm running Windows 7 Professional with the SAS 9.3 Analytics Pro Package with just the EG front end with local server only. To answer's Chris's 2nd question, I will need to retain all characters in the data (including the ones unique to UTF-8). That being said, I have just one more round of questions before I am set: 1) Chris: I guess I'm just used to the default WLATIN1 session encoding. From what I've been able to gather, UTF-8 is an international standard that contains all of the characters in the WLATIN1 code set with the addition of characters (mostly related to academia?) unique to UTF-8. If this is in fact true, are there any downsides to changing my default session to UTF-8 permanently? I'm assuming since UTF-8 is the broader code set that transcoding my existing WLATIN1 data sets to UTF-8 should be pretty seamless and happen as I update permanent libraries. If you can point me in any direction, I'd appreciate it. I have the SAS 9.3 OnlineDoc and have been trying to read up on encoding, etc in the NLS documentation and any other PDFs that discuss encoding as it relates to SAS sessions, files, and data sets. 2) Roger: As I am running Windows 7 and have no problems running as administrator, can you please expand on this shortcut for running several different configs? Depending on Chris's response to number 1 (or what I find out this weekend about changing my encoding default to UTF-8 permanently), it would be great to have the option to have the VB script that launches my scheduled project control the default encoding session on start up. I didn't even think to check the VB script as I usually just let SAS create it in the folder and never touch it again. This could be extremely helpful. Thanks again to all. I was spinning my wheels and getting nowhere as I have been working with SAS for a long time, but loading XML data, character code sets, and encoding options are very much new to me. - Jordan
... View more