You might receive the popup error shown here when you open a SAS data set from a SAS client such as SAS Enterprise Guide if the following conditions exist:

• You are connecting to a remote server on z/OS
• The client locale is different from the server's system encoding (W0, W3, W6, W9, ...)
• The SAS data set uses localized variant characters instead of English characters for format names

You might see the error in this scenario: Your SAS Enterprise Guide client session is using the language setting of EN_US. It connects to a z/OS server for which the system encoding is W6 (Swedish). When you try to open a SAS data set on the remote server, the error occurs if the format assigned to a variable in the SAS data set is in the following Swedish characters instead of English:

This problem also occurs if you execute SAS code using localized variant characters in format names using the same client and remote server environment.

Workaround

To circumvent this problem, do the following:

1. Remove, if specified, the NLSCOMPATMODE option from the remote z/OS server's CONFIG file.


Note: NONLSCOMPATMODE is the default value. The NLSCOMPATMODE value will be deprecated in a future release of SAS.


2. In the file /configuration-directory/Lev1/SASApp/WorkspaceServer/sasv9_usermods.cfg, add the TRANTAB= option as described below:



1. After verifying that the remote z/OS server is using the option NONLSCOMPATMODE, execute this code to obtain the current TRANTAB= value:
   PROC OPTIONS OPTION=TRANTAB; RUN;


2. Add to the current TRANTAB= option nnnn_snp in the 6th position; where nnnn is the 4-character short name for the remote server's encoding. See the SAS^® 9.4 National Language Support (NLS): Reference Guide for a list of nnnn values.

For example, for Swedish encoding, set the TRANTAB option as follows:

options TRANTAB=(eo43wlt1,wlt1eo43,eo43_ucs,eo43_lcs,eo43_ccl,eo43_snp,,,eo43_scc);

See also SAS Note 35644: "The locale for a server session in SAS^® 9.2 and later binds to the client locale."

Operating System and Release Information