DBENCODING= Data Set Option

Syntax Description

The 12-byte-SAS-encoding-value is a SAS-defined encoding value that can be up to 12 characters long. For a list of valid values, see the section "Encoding Values in SAS Language Elements" in SAS National Language Support Reference Guide.

Details

This option enables you to specify the encoding character set that is used in your Microsoft Access database or Excel workbook file. Specify this option to enable SAS to transcode character data between the SAS session encoding and the DBENCODING= value.

If you are running SAS in a UTF-8 (Unicode) session, you do not need to specify a DBENCODING= value. In a UTF-8 session, SAS binds all text data in wide-character format and transcodes character data to UTF-16 data that can be saved in a Microsoft Access file or in an Excel file.

Note:   Transcoding is a process of converting text data from one encoding to another encoding. It does not translate from one language to another language. For example, it neither translates the English language to the Japanese language nor the Chinese language to the Japanese language, although it might map some Chinese characters to Japanese Hanzi characters.  

This option is useful when you are running SAS in an encoding session, which is different from the installed Microsoft Jet provider (OS) encoding. For example, if you are running SAS in a Chinese session using English Microsoft Windows XP with an English version of MDAC and Jet provider, you can set DBENCODING='UTF-16' to read your Chinese data from an Excel file. Specifying DBENCODING='UTF-16' enables SAS to bind text data in wide-character format and transcode the data between the SAS session (in Chinese BIG5 encoding) and the Jet provider (in Unicode encoding).

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