Cross-Architecture Issues

Encoding Compatibility between SAS/CONNECT Client and Server Sessions

In order to successfully use SAS/CONNECT programming services, the encodings of the client and server sessions must be compatible. Compatible encodings share a common character set. For example, client and server sessions that each use the UTF-8 encoding are compatible with each other.

Client and server sessions that use the same locale, but do not specify an encoding of UTF-8, can also be compatible. However, if the client and server sessions use the same locale, but the UTF-8 encoding is specified for only one of the two sessions, the sessions are incompatible, and the connection fails. Here is an example of an error message:

ERROR: The client session encoding UTF8 is not compatible with the 
server session encoding Wlatin2. 
ERROR: Remote submit to server1 cancelled.

In some cases, a client session can connect to a server session even though each session runs in a different locale and neither uses the UTF-8 encoding. If each session's encoding contains all the characters of each locale's native language, the sessions are compatible and a connection occurs. For example, a Windows client session that uses the Wlatin1 encoding that is associated with the Spanish Mexico locale is compatible with a UNIX server session that uses Latin1 encoding that is associated with the Italian Italy locale. All the characters used in the Italian and Spanish languages are present in both the Wlatin1 and the Latin1 encoding.

However, SAS/CONNECT programming services might not successfully run in incompatible client and server sessions. For example, a client session that uses the Wlatin2 encoding that is associated with the Czech Czechoslovakia locale is incompatible with the server session that uses the open_ed-1141 z/OS encoding that is associated with the German Germany locale. The Wlatin2 encoding and the open_ed-1141 encodings are not compatible, because many German characters are not present in the Wlatin2 encoding and many Czech characters are not present in the open-ed-1141 encoding. The operation might not be successful. Here is an example of a warning message:

Warning: The client session encoding Wlatin2  is not compatible with the 
server session encoding open-ed-1141.
Data may not be transmitted correctly.

For information about locales and encodings, see the SAS National Language Support (NLS): Reference Guide.

Top of Page