In SAS Studio 3.2, the encoding to read and write text files is set to UTF-8 and cannot be changed. In order to use SAS/ACCESS Interface to ODBC with MySQL with an encoding of UTF-8, the following configuration steps are required:

1. Along with the other environment variables for using ODBC, you must set EASYSOFT_UNICODE to YES.
   • If SAS/ACCESS Interface to ODBC is installed on a UNIX system, complete these steps:
     1. Open the sasenv_local file, located in !SASROOT/bin.
     2. Add this command to the file: export EASYSOFT_UNICODE=YES
2. You must add CHARSET=UTF8 in the MySQL DSN stanzas in the global odbc.ini file.
3. To avoid socket-related errors when trying to use SAS/ACCESS Interface to ODBC to connect to MySQL, you might need to set the ODBCSYSINI environment variable to the directory containing the odbc.ini file.
4. It might also be necessary to set the ODBCINI environment variable.
5. To find the encoding for a MySQL database, you can use the unixODBC ISQL query tool and submit commands similar to the following:
      show variables like 'character\_set\_%'
      show create database <database>

Starting with SAS^® Studio 3.3, the text encoding can be changed. These steps are still required if an encoding of UTF-8 is used.

Operating System and Release Information