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Error: Something about storing 8bit data

Posted: Thu Feb 14, 2013 3:49 pm
by becky
Hi,

I am getting a weird error when I query a column from a table (see attachment) in dbVisualizer.

The query is simply:

Code: Select all

select search_path from sdk_software.schedule;
If I run the same query in vsql it does not return an error!

Any idea what this error means or how I can fix it?

Re: Error: Something about storing 8bit data

Posted: Thu Feb 14, 2013 5:01 pm
by JimKnicely
Becky,

Are you using the Vertica JDBC drivers? You are probably getting an error with non-UTF8 characters somewhere in that column. You can check if there are any funky characters with the ISUTF8 function.

Run this is vsql:

Code: Select all

SELECT search_path from sdk_software.schedule WHERE isutf8(search_path) = 'f';
See if you get any records back!

Re: Error: Something about storing 8bit data

Posted: Thu Feb 14, 2013 6:50 pm
by becky
Hi Jim!

Your query returned one record. We originally loaded the data into the Vertica table from an Excel spreadsheet saved as a CSV file. I examined the row in the spreadsheet for the record your query returned and noticed that it has a "dash" character. I changed it to a "hyphen", reloaded the data, and wa- lah, the error in dbVisualizer disappeared!

So, is it Vertica that doesn't like the dash, or is dbVisualizer?

Thank you very much for your assistance on this!

Re: Error: Something about storing 8bit data

Posted: Thu Feb 14, 2013 7:01 pm
by JimKnicely
Cool!

Did you want it to be a hyphen? Typically in MS Word and Excel when you insert hyphens, some of the hyphens are converted into long dashes (also called en dashes). I find that annoying. Did you load the file from Windows?

Re: Error: Something about storing 8bit data

Posted: Fri Feb 15, 2013 12:46 am
by sarah
Hey Becky,

We had a similar issue. If you switch dbVisualizer to to use the JBDC/ODBC driver as opposed to the JDBC driver you won't get that error. However, the characters that can't be displayed (non UTF8) will appear as little squares...