R programming Trouble importing unicode characters from SQL Server Database

Question

I have trouble importing data from SQL Server with RODBC package. While importing, the process is smooth and imports quite nicely but there is a problem with unicode characters. They are changed to question marks(?). Have any of you ever come across this problem? If yes please tell me how you've resolved it.

Do you mean in rstudio or in your output, see https://support.rstudio.com/hc/en-us/articles/200532197-Character-Encoding — Bruno, May 11 '20 at 18:09
In rstudio, when you view dataset or subset anything from column which contains unicode I get question marks only, meaning it isn't reading the unicode characters — Irakli Salia, May 11 '20 at 18:17

Waldi · Answer 1 · 2020-05-11T19:37:45.867

0

The DBI package allows to set the encoding in the connexion descriptor to avoid special characters being transformed into question marks :

conn <- DBI::dbConnect(
                      odbc::odbc(),
                      Driver = "SQL Server",
                      ...,
                      encoding = "latin1"
                      )

In RODBC, you should also be able to set the DBMSencoding parameter

edited May 11 '20 at 19:37

answered May 11 '20 at 19:05

Waldi

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I connected with DBMSencoding set to 'latin1' but it still gives me question marks :/ – Irakli Salia May 11 '20 at 19:56
maybe try utf-8? – Bruno May 11 '20 at 20:04
I've tried utf-8 as well and utf-16 as well, still doesn't work – Irakli Salia May 11 '20 at 20:05
do you know what is the encoding of your SQL server? – Waldi May 12 '20 at 05:10
Unfortunately no, is there a way to view what is there any other way to view the encoding of the server? – Irakli Salia May 12 '20 at 06:45
Have a look at :https://stackoverflow.com/questions/5182164/sql-server-default-character-encoding – Waldi May 12 '20 at 13:17

R programming Trouble importing unicode characters from SQL Server Database

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