Date:         Wed, 25 Jan 2006 13:31:58 -0500
Reply-To:     Peter Crawford <peter.crawford@BLUEYONDER.CO.UK>
Sender:       "SAS(r) Discussion" <SAS-L@LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
From:         Peter Crawford <peter.crawford@BLUEYONDER.CO.UK>
Subject:      Re: Access, DDE, and Memo data type

On Wed, 25 Jan 2006 11:11:30 -0500, Howard Schreier <hs AT dc-sug DOT org>
<nospam@HOWLES.COM> wrote:

>Do you need the content of the memo field? If not, create an ACCESS query
>which excludes it and point DDE to the query rather than to the underlying
>table.
>
>On Wed, 25 Jan 2006 02:05:41 -0500, Kevin Roland Viel <kviel@EMORY.EDU>
wrote:
>
>>I have a table with a Memo field.  Unlike text, which is limited to 255
>>characters, this field can range to over 60 Kb.  There are only 30K
>>records, but SAS seems to stall.  I think that may be related to the
>>screen saver popping up and subsequent need to log back in if I am not
>>there to shake things up.
>>
>>I have exported to a csv and aborted an export to Excel due to time.  The
>>csv did not have initial promising results.
>>
>>Has anyone successful dealt with this?
>>
>>Gracias,
>>
>>Kevin
>>
>>
>>Kevin Viel
>>Department of Epidemiology
>>Rollins School of Public Health
>>Emory University
>>Atlanta, GA 30322

Kevin

I've tested dde from excel
It is not limited to 255 bytes, just the default lrecl= on infile.
When you increase the lrecl, you can read the wide data.

When reading it in a sas data step, consider your output.
How would you want to deliver the memo field contents ?
   - as two 30K length variables (option compress=yes is helpful ;-)
   - as a series of shorter variables
       - within one row (surely not 60 cols of length $1000 )
       - as separate $100 rows until the memo is exhausted
  ?

Each alternative can be delivered from a straight read from DDE

Providing more description of your data structure would be
appropriate if you need more help. We would need some idea
of both the input, and the usage that drives a design for the
output tables.

Peter