You might receive an error message containing garbage characters similar to the following when using the SAS/ACCESS Interface to Oracle:

In this message, libref is the library reference for your LIBNAME statement.

Here is another example of how this problem manifests itself in the SAS log:

This error seems to be generated when the ORACLE_HOME environment variable is not set in the SAS session. Either you do not have ORACLE_HOME specified correctly in the system path under Windows. Or, under UNIX, the ORACLE_HOME environment variable is not set or not set correctly. Or, there might be a mixed Oracle installation.

To circumvent the problem under UNIX, set the ORACLE_HOME environment variable prior to invoking your SAS session. Or, add the environment variable to the sasenv/sasenv_local file located in the !SASROOT/bin directory (where !SASROOT is the location of your SAS installation).

To circumvent the problem under Windows, set the Windows SYSTEM PATH to contain the correct ORACLE_HOME.

To determine how environment variables are set for a SAS session with DATA step code, use FILENAME PIPE. 

This error might also be issued when the Oracle installation is incorrect. In one customer scenario, they had mixed 32-bit and 64-bit Oracle libraries installed in the same client library directory. After the installation was corrected, this error stopped occurring. Another customer had permission issues in the Oracle client libraries directory. After the permissions were modified so that the libraries could be read by the users, this error stopped occurring.

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