SAS/ACCESS® Interface to Microsoft SQL Server tripples the length of NCHAR and NVARCHAR when read into SAS®


The default length of NCHAR and NVARCHAR data types is tripled when read with SAS® 9.4M9 (TS1M9) running with UTF-8 encoding. This issue is a regression from earlier SAS versions where the default length is doubled.

This problem is caused by a wrong length calculation in the SAS/ACCESS Interface to Microsoft SQL software.

Note: If you prefer for the lengths to be tripled, you can set OctetSizeCalculation=3 in the data source definition in odbc.ini.