When you read in a BigQuery table, the length of string variables might be longer than the length specified with the MAX_CHAR_LEN= option when running your SAS^® software with UTF-8. By default, the string data type in BigQuery is read into SAS and defined a length of 2,000. When running with UTF-8 SAS, this data type is instead assigned a length of 8,000. Using the MAX_CHAR_LEN= option in either the LIBNAME or CASLIB statement can shorten the default length. However, the length might be four times the length specified. This behavior is by design to support Unicode characters. 

Click the Hot Fix tab in this note for a link to instructions about accessing and applying the software update.

The hot fix adds a new LIBNAME and CASLIB statement option, DBCLIENT_MAX_BYTES. You can set this option to 1 if you know that your data does not contain any Unicode characters that require extra bytes. When you use the DBCLIENT_MAX_BYTES option, string variables are assigned a length of 2,000 by default. However, if you specified a length via the MAX_CHAR_LEN= option, that length will be used.

Operating System and Release Information

Viya on Linux: An update for this issue is available for SAS Viya 3.5. For instructions on how to access and apply software updates, see the Updating Your SAS Viya software section in the SAS Viya 3.5 for Linux Deployment Guide at

A fix for this issue for SAS/ACCESS Interface to Google BigQuery 9.41 is available at: