Display issues when reading data with unicode characters from Oracle

[ntobon]

Environment Details

• Alteryx Designer
• Oracle

When reading data from Oracle database that contains special characters ( non-western characters), the Designer will not display them correctly:

Characters are displayed correctly when reading data directly in the database outside of Alteryx:



Designer - Result Window doesn't show those Characters correctly:



 

Cause

The data types in Designer are not always matching all the different data types in the database landscape.
In the case of Oracle, we translate varchar2 to a V_String in Alteryx and the Unicode data gets lost.

Resolution

Add a TO_NCHAR in the query to convert the field. If you change it after it's already been read in, the data has already been lost. 



Correct Results:




Additional Resources 

You may experience the same issue with other databases. For DB2, please see Display issues when reading data with Cyrillic characters from DB2

You may not need any conversion function, you just need to change a setting within the driver. For details, please see How To: resolve errors in Designer for non-English characters

 

[ntobon]

You can have similar issue with SQL Server. Here is an example:

1. Table column is defined as VARCHAR. The record contains the Euro sign (€). 

2. Reading the Table outside Alteryx shows the character correctly:

Select * from prueba_alteryx

3. In Designer the Euro sign (€) is displayed incorrectly:

CAUSE:

The symbol is unicode and VARCHAR doesn't support Unicode characters.

RESOLUTION:
You must convert VARCHAR data type to NVARCHAR using CAST function  in order to hold Unicode character:

select cast(campo1 AS nchar) from prueba_alteryx