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
Normally I just use PROC APPEND to insert observations into a remote database.
Make sure your date variable in your SAS dataset use the same data type as the corresponding variable names in your target database table. So if your MS SQL database uses TIMESTAMP fields for date values then make sure your SAS dataset uses DATETIME values.
If you want to use constants then make sure to use SAS syntax in your SAS code and MS SQL syntax in any pass through code.
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: