Editor's note: This question/challenge is specific to using PROC SQL with Microsoft Access and the SAS/ACCESS to PC Files engine.
@PGStats I'm not going to start using passthrough. Then my macros would be dependent on MS Access-specific sql, which is worse than the current situation. If I have to do a re-write, I'm going to move this into data steps.
@ChrisNZ The data steps work just fine with either the if statement or the where statement to select rows.
I've taken out the sort from SQL statement, but that does not seem to have any effect.
I think it all comes down to how the distinct clause is implemented. Apparently, it is only wants to "distinct-ify" the first 255 characters in a DB field, so it only spits out the first 255 chars? I dunno. I've removed the distinct clause from my production macro and the first use case, seems to work with our desired behavior.
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