How to write SAS dates to Microsoft SQL Server 2016 Date
data type in database?
I got SAS data with a sas date DataEndDay
and I want to write that into a database. The following bit is in use (buffer is just to speed up the testing-failing) :
libname valu oledb provider=sqloledb schema="dbo" INSERTBUFF=100
properties=("User ID"="&username." Password="&pw."
"data source" = &database.
"initial catalog"=&catalog.);
proc sql noprint;
insert into valu.Data_upload_from_me
( <some_columns>,
<more-columns>
,DataEndDay
)
select
<some_columns_source>,
<more-columns_source>
,DataEndDay
from work.SAS_data_to_publish
;quit;
Of course because SAS dates are numbers, direct writing is going to fail. What works is if I hard-code this as:
select
<some_columns_source>,
<more-columns_source>
,'2018-12-12'
from work.SAS_data_to_publish
;quit;
But If I convert the SAS date to string in SAS datasteps:
data SAS_data_to_publish ;
set SAS_data_to_publish ;
dataEndday0 = put(DataEndDay, yymmddd10.);
DataEndDay1 = quote(dataEndday0, "'") ;
run;
and try to write either of these, I get conversion error:
ERROR: ICommand::Execute failed. : Conversion failed when converting date and/or time from character string.
When I select the string it looks pretty ok:
proc sql; select DataEndDay1 from SAS_data_to_publish; quit;
‘2018-12-12’
previously I’ve managed to write dateTimes with similar trick, which works:
proc format;
picture sjm
. = .
other='%Y-%0m-%0d %0H:%0M:%0S:000' (datatype=datetime)
;run;
data to_be_written;
set save.raw_data_to_be_written;
DataEndDay0 = put(dhms(DataEndDay,0,0,0), sjm. -L);
run;
Anyone ran into similar issues? How could I write the dates? I could ask them to change the column to dateTime, maybe….
Thank you in advance.
Edit:
I managed to develop a work-around, which works but is ugly and -frankly- I don’t like it. It so happens that my date is same for all rows, so I can assing it to macro variable and then use it in database writing.
data _NULL_;
set SAS_data_to_publish;
call symput('foobar', quote( put (DataEndDay , yymmddd10. -L), "'") ) ;
run;
.
select
<some_columns_source>,
<more-columns_source>
,&foobar.
from work.SAS_data_to_publish
;quit;
Of course this would fail immediately should DataEndDay
vary, but maybe demonstrates that something is off in Proc SQL
s select clause….
Edit Edit Pasted the question to SAS forums
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Answer
I finally managed to crack the issue. The issue was for the missing values. As I am passing the values as strings into the database the parser interpreted missing values as real dots instead of empty strings. The following works:
data upload;
set upload;
CreatedReportdate2 = PUT(CreatedReportdate , yymmddn8.);
run;
libname uplad_db odbc noprompt =
"DRIVER=SQL Server; server=&server.; Uid=&user.;Pwd=&pw.; DATABASE=&db.;"
INSERTBUFF=32767;
proc sql;
insert into uplad_db.upload_table
( . )
select
case when CreatedReportdate2 ='.' then '' else CreatedReportdate2 end,
from upload;
quit;