Chinese characters shown blank - Impala connection

[Eszter_dup_105]

Hi, 

I am connecting to our database through Impala connection.

We have some fields such as First Name and Last Name in our which are filled with a mix of Chinese or Latin characters, however those for Chinese characters are shown blank and no matter what I try (convert the field from V_String to V_WString by streaming out and use the multi-field formula /ConvertFromCodePage([_CurrentField_], 936) /change output type to V_WString etc) it is still blank.(Same InDB and local)

Exporting to a csv file with Unicode UTF-8 also just show ?? instead of the characters themselves, but I can see that it recognizes the length of the content in the column so the data is there just can not be viewed.

When trying the same thing by connecting to our live database through Oracle then all works fine and Chinese characters can be seen, plus changing the output file's format also works. I would like to avoid using our live database though so I would need a solution what works for Impala as well.

I am kind of lost what to do as I have read all related articles and forum comments regarding Chinese characters but nothing works.

I'm relatively new to Alteryx so I'm might just missing something very obvious. (Alteryx 10.6)

Anybody had similar problem before?

[Eszter_dup_105 · Accepted solution]

For me the solution lied in the driver settings.

We use ODBC Driver where I needed to make sure that within the 'System DSN' tab under the Impala (Simba Impala ODBC) Driver's configuration -> advanced option -> 'Use SQL Unicode Types' is ticked.

Hope this helps somebody who is dealing with the same problem as I did.