When you use SAS/ACCESS Interface to ODBC with an Oracle data source name, the DBMAX_TEXT= option is ignored for fields that have a data type of VARCHAR. For example, if you have an Oracle table of data type VARCHAR(8) and you specify DBMAX_TEXT=4, the option is ignored and the field maintains a length of eight characters. The option is honored, however, if you use SAS/ACCESS^® Interface to Oracle under the same circumstances.

In SAS/ACCESS^® 9.2 for Relational Databases: Reference, Second Edition, the DBMAX_TEXT= option is defined as supporting any very-long data type. However, when you use SAS/ACCESS Interface to ODBC with an ODBC driver for Oracle, DBMAX_TEXT= only supports the LONG, CLOB, and BLOB Oracle data types.

Currently, there is no solution for this problem. As a workaround, use the DBSASTYPE= data set option instead of the DBMAX_TEXT= option.