Using the SAS/ACCESS^® Interface to ODBC DBLoad procedure to write to a Microsoft SQL Server Unicode column, SAS defaults to a CHAR variable type. The Windows system locale and SAS session locale are set to the same value—English—but the non-English characters are converted to question marks (????) when written to the ODBC data source.

To use the DBLoad Procedure to write non-Latin1 data to a Microsoft SQL Server Unicode column, use the TYPE statement, as follows:

proc dbload dbms=odbc data=work.customer;
  dsn=sqldsn;
  user="userid";
  password="password";
  table=mytab;
  type 3 = 'nvarchar(8)';
  list all;
  load;
run;

In the preceding code, the third column would be created with a NVARCHAR(8) on the SQL Server side.

Users of the Libname/ODBC Engine statement should specify the DBTYPE Data Set Option.

Operating System and Release Information

A fix for SAS 9.1.3 (9.1 TS1M3) for this issue is available at:

A fix for SAS 9.1.3 (9.1 TS1M3) with Asian Language Support (DBCS) for this issue is available at: