SAS Oracle Data Issues

4
votes

I'm having an issue regarding special characters. I use SAS to connect to an Oracle database and then download tables from Oracle to SAS datasets.

Previously, special characters where downloaded correctly without a problem. I've recently received a new laptop at work and since then there has been some data issues.

Basically, what is happening is that special characters are removed or completely replaced. For instance, é is being replaced by e. á replaced with a. Other special characters are just completely removed and replaced with '?'

I've read a bunch of articles about encoding, transcoding and NLS_LANGUAGE, but I just can't figure out why this is happening and how to fix it. My other colleagues who are still using old laptops do not have this same issue!

Please, any help would be GREATLY appreciated

1
oraclesas
What are the NLS settings for server and client? What happens if you query the database with SQL*Plus from your laptop? - Frank Schmitt
Well, if I connect to the database from my laptop using SQL Developer, I can see that the special characters are there in the database. If I connect with SAS and view them as datasets, they are gone. Here are some of the NLS DATABASE PARAMETERS NLS_LANGUAGE AMERICAN NLS_TERRITORY AMERICA NLS_CHARACTERSET WE8MSWIN1252 NLS_NCHAR_CHARACTERSET AL16UTF16 - Richard
Will this help - listserv.uga.edu/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0209b&L=sas-l&P=26341 - Mozan Sykol
I think that points me closer to the right direction. I don't see the system variable on my laptop, but I don't see on my colleagues' laptops either. - Richard
If you are still having problems, post back with more detail. In what ways are your old and new PCs different (operating system and SAS version)? If you only have this problem from inside SAS, it's likely a configuration file setting. - BellevueBob

1 Answers

1
votes

Check your Windows Registry. On my machine the setting is at HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\oracle\KEY_OraClient11g_home1\NLS_LANG. Compare this key to that of coworkers who use SAS w/ Oracle and still have the older laptops.