Unable to visualize junk character - sql

I am receiving data input from a .DAT file to my teradata table using Informatica. However it is failing on junk character issue.
My solution -
Remove the junk character using a REPLACE function. I tried to open the .dat file in NOTEPAD++ to see what is the junk/bad character but I see this (few samples)
Crea􀆟ve Cloud
Mul􀆟ple
Image of how it looks in NOTEPAD++
The text it shows is xEDxAFx80 xEDXB6X9F
My ask -
I don't know what these character mean. Can anyone tell me the ASCII code or how to put this in a REPLACE function so I can replace it with another character ?
EDIT -
Target column_name - COLUMN_NAME VARCHAR(240) CHARACTER SET UNICODE NOT CASESPECIFIC [Teradata Database]
Source Column_name - VARCHAR2(240) [ORACLE Database]
Data in Oracle -

You can parse the character using an xml parser or to an xml target and the junk character will get converted to its hex representation thus not erroring out. However, Nico has provided a simpler solution here
https://network.informatica.com/thread/20642

Related

Weird characters showing up when importing from csv files in sql

I'm trying to import data from a csv file into SQL but I keep getting the error
\copy owner (owner_id, owner_name, owner_surname) FROM 'C:\Users\Documents\owners.csv' DELIMITER ',';
ERROR: invalid input syntax for type integer: "0"
CONTEXT: COPY owner, line 1, column owner_id: "0"
Here's what owners.csv looks like
I understand that the error is to do with the encoding and that I should change the encoding to UTF 8 BOM, which I have done but the error still persist
0 in WIN1252 is hexadecimal 0xEFBBBF30, which would be a BOM and a 0.
Remove that BOM from the file, and you will get better results.

Line contains invalid enclosed character data or delimiter at position

I was trying to load the data from the csv file into the Oracle sql developer, when inserting the data I encountered the error which says:
Line contains invalid enclosed character data or delimiter at position
I am not sure how to tackle this problem!
For Example:
INSERT INTO PROJECT_LIST (Project_Number, Name, Manager, Projects_M,
Project_Type, In_progress, at_deck, Start_Date, release_date, For_work, nbr,
List, Expenses) VALUES ('5770','"Program Cardinal
(Agile)','','','','','',to_date('', 'YYYY-MM-DD'),'','','','','');
The Error shown were:
--Insert failed for row 4
--Line contains invalid enclosed character data or delimiter at position 79.
--Row 4
I've had success when I've converted the csv file to excel by "save as", then changing the format to .xlsx. I then load in SQL developer the .xlsx version. I think the conversion forces some of the bad formatting out. It worked at least on my last 2 files.
I fixed it by using the concatenate function in my CSV file first and then uploaded it on sql, which worked.
My guess is that it doesn't like to_date('', 'YYYY-MM-DD'). It's missing a date to format. Is that an actual input of your data?
But it could also possibly be the double quote in "Program Cardinal (Agile). Though I don't see why that would get picked up as an invalid character.

How to import from a mixed-encoding file to a PostgreSQL table

I have a 30 GB text file. the encoding of the file is UTF8 but it also contains some Windows-1252 characters. So, when I try to import, it gives the following error:
ERROR: invalid byte sequence for encoding "UTF8": 0x9b
How can I fix this?
the file already has UTF8 format, when i run the 'file' command for this file it says the encoding is UTF8. but it also contains some not UTF8 byte sequences. for example when I run the \copy command after a while it gives the above mentioned error for this row:
0B012234 Basic study of <img src="/fulltext-image.asp?format=htmlnonpaginated&src=323K744431152658_html\233_2 basic study of img src fulltext image asp format htmlnonpaginated src 323k744431152658_html 233_2 1975 Semigroup Forum semigroup forum 04861B53 19555
The issue is caused by the backslash (\).
Use CSV format which does not treat backslash as a special character, e.g. -
\copy t from myfile.txt with csv quote E'\x1' delimiter E'\x2'

Removing replacement character � from column

Based on my research so far this character indicates bad encoding between the database and front end. Unfortunately, I don't have any control over either of those. I'm using Teradata Studio.
How can I filter this character out? I'm trying to perform a REGEX_SUBSTR function on a column that occasionally contains �, which throws the error "The string contains an untranslatable character".
Here is my SQL. AIRCFT_POSITN_ID is the column that contains the replacement character.
SELECT DISTINCT AIRCFT_POSITN_ID,
REGEXP_SUBSTR(AIRCFT_POSITN_ID, '[0-9]+') AS AUTOROW
FROM PROD_MAE_MNTNC_VW.FMR_DISCRPNCY_DFRL
WHERE DFRL_CREATE_TMS > CURRENT_DATE -25
Your diagnostic is correct, so first of all, you might want to check the Session Character Set (it is part of the connection definition).
If it is ASCII change it to UTF8 and you will be able to see the original characters instead of the substitute character.
And in case the character is indeed part of the data and not just an indication for encoding translations issues:
The substitute character AKA SUB (DEC: 26 HEX: 1A) is quite unique in Teradata.
you cannot use it directly -
select '�';
-- [6706] The string contains an untranslatable character.
select '1A'XC;
-- [6706] The string contains an untranslatable character.
If you are using version 14.0 or above you can generate it with the CHR function:
select chr(26);
If you're below version 14.0 you can generate it like this:
select translate (_unicode '05D0'XC using unicode_to_latin with error);
Once you have generated the character you can now use it with REPLACE or OTRANSLATE
create multiset table t (i int,txt varchar(100) character set latin) unique primary index (i);
insert into t (i,txt) values (1,translate ('Hello שלום world עולם' using unicode_to_latin with error));
select * from t;
-- Hello ���� world ����
select otranslate (txt,chr(26),'') from t;
-- Hello world
select otranslate (txt,translate (_unicode '05D0'XC using unicode_to_latin with error),'') from t;
-- Hello world
BTW, there are 2 versions for OTRANSLATE and OREPLACE:
The functions under syslib works with LATIN.
the functions under TD_SYSFNLIB works with UNICODE.
In addition to Dudu's excellent answer above, I wanted to add the following now that I've encountered the issue again and had more time to experiment. The following SELECT command produced an untranslatable character:
SELECT IDENTIFY FROM PROD_MAE_MNTNC_VW.SCHD_MNTNC;
IDENTIFY
24FEB1747659193DC330A163DCL�ORD
Trying to perform a REGEXP_REPLACE or OREPLACE directly on this character produces an error:
Failed [6706 : HY000] The string contains an untranslatable character.
I changed the CHARSET property in my Teradata connection from UTF8 to ASCII and I could now see the offending character, looks like a tab
IDENTIFY
Using the TRANSLATE_CHK command using this specific conversion succeeds and identifies the position of the offending character (Note that this does not work using the UTF8 charset):
TRANSLATE_CHK(IDENTIFY USING KANJI1_SBC_TO_UNICODE) AS BADCHAR
BADCHAR
28
Now this character can be dealt with using some CASE statements to remove the bad character and retain the remainder of the string:
CASE WHEN TRANSLATE_CHK(IDENTIFY USING KANJI1_SBC_TO_UNICODE) = 0 THEN IDENTIFY
ELSE SUBSTR(IDENTIFY, 1, TRANSLATE_CHK(IDENTIFY USING KANJI1_SBC_TO_UNICODE)-1)
END AS IDENTIFY
Hopes this helps someone out.

Replace character in SQL results

This is from a Oracle SQL query. It has these weird skinny rectangle shapes in the database in places where apostrophes should be. (I wish we would could paste screen shots in here)
It looks like this when I copy and paste the results.
spouse�s
is there a way to write a SQL SELECT statement that searches for this character in the field and replaces it with an apostrophe in the results?
Edit: I need to change only the results in a SELECT statement for reporting purposes, I can't change the Database.
I ran this
select dump('�') from dual;
which returned
Typ=96 Len=3: 239,191,189
This seems to work so far
select translate('What is your spouse�s first name?', '�', '''') from dual;
but this doesn't work
select translate(Fieldname, '�', '''') from TableName
Select FN from TN
What is your spouse�s first name?
SELECT DUMP(FN, 1016) from TN
Typ=1 Len=33 CharacterSet=US7ASCII: 57,68,61,74,20,69,73,20,79,6f,75,72,20,73,70,6f,75,73,65,92,73,20,66,69,72,73,74,20,6e,61,6d,65,3f
EDIT:
So I have established that is the backquote character. I can't get the DB updated so I'm trying this code
SELECT REGEX_REPLACE(FN,"\0092","\0027") FROM TN
and I"m getting ORA-00904:"Regex_Replace":invalid identifier
This seems a problem with your charset configuracion. Check your NLS_LANG and others NLS_xxx enviroment/regedit values. You have to check the oracle server, your client and the client of the inserter of that data.
Try to DUMP the value. you can do it with a select as simple as:
SELECT DUMP(the_column)
FROM xxx
WHERE xxx
UPDATE: I think that before try to replace, look for the root of the problem. If this happens because a charset trouble you can get big problems with bad data.
UPDATE 2: Answering the comments. The problem may be is not on the database server side, may be is in the client side. The problem (if this is the problem) can be a translation on server to/from client comunication. It's for a server-client bad configuracion-coordination. For instance if the server has defined UTF8 charset and your client uses US7ASCII, then all acutes will appear as ?.
Another approach can be that if the server has defined UTF8 charset and your client also UTF8 but the application is not able to show UTF8 chars, then the problem is in the application side.
UPDATE 3: On your examples:
select translate('What. It works because the � is exactly the same char: You have pasted on both sides.
select translate(Fieldname. It does not work because the � is not stored on database, it's the char that the client receives may be because some translation occurs from the data table until it's showed to you.
Next step: Look in DUMP syntax and try to extract the codes for the mysterious char (from the table not pasting �!).
I would say there's a good chance the character is a single-tick "smart quote" (I hate the name). The smart quotes are characters 91-94 (using a Windows encoding), or Unicode U+2018, U+2019, U+201C, and U+201D.
I'm going to propose a front-end application-based, client-side approach to the problem:
I suspect that this problem has more to do with a mismatch between the font you are trying to display the word spouse�s with, and the character �. That icon appears when you are trying to display a character in a Unicode font that doesn't have the glyph for the character's code.
The Oracle database will dutifully return whatever characters were INSERTed into its' column. It's more up to you, and your application, to interpret what it will look like given the font you are trying to display your data with in your application, so I suggest investigating as to what this mysterious � character is that is replacing your apostrophes. Start by using FerranB's recommended DUMP().
Try running the following query to get the character code:
SELECT DUMP(<column with weird character>, 1016)
FROM <your table>
WHERE <column with weird character> like '%spouse%';
If that doesn't grab your actual text from the database, you'll need to modify the WHERE clause to actually grab the offending column.
Once you've found the code for the character, you could just replace the character by using the regex_replace() built-in function by determining the raw hex code of the character and then supplying the ASCII / C0 Controls and Basic Latin character 0x0027 ('), using code similar to this:
UPDATE <table>
set <column with offending character>
= REGEX_REPLACE(<column with offending character>,
"<character code of �>",
"'")
WHERE regex_like(<column with offending character>,"<character code of �>");
If you aren't familiar with Unicode and different ways of character encoding, I recommend reading Joel's article The Absolute Minimum Every Software Developer Absolutely, Positively Must Know About Unicode and Character Sets (No Excuses!). I wasn't until I read that article.
EDIT: If your'e seeing 0x92, there's likely a charset mismatch here:
0x92 in CP-1252 (default Windows code page) is a backquote character, which looks kinda like an apostrophe. This code isn't a valid ASCII character, and it isn't valid in IS0-8859-1 either. So probably either the database is in CP-1252 encoding (don't find that likely), or a database connection which spoke CP-1252 inserted it, or somehow the apostrophe got converted to 0x92. The database is returning values that are valid in CP-1252 (or some other charset where 0x92 is valid), but your db client connection isn't expecting CP-1252. Hence, the wierd question mark.
And FerranB is likely right. I would talk with your DBA or some other admin about this to get the issue straightened out. If you can't, I would try either doing the update above (seems like you can't), or doing this:
INSERT (<normal table columns>,...,<column with offending character>) INTO <table>
SELECT <all normal columns>, REGEX_REPLACE(<column with offending character>,
"\0092",
"\0027") -- for ASCII/ISO-8859-1 apostrophe
FROM <table>
WHERE regex_like(<column with offending character>,"\0092");
DELETE FROM <table> WHERE regex_like(<column with offending character>,"\0092");
Before you do this you need to understand what actually happened. It looks to me that someone inserted non-ascii strings in the database. For example Unicode or UTF-8. Before you fix this, be very sure that this is actually a bug. The apostrophe comes in many forms, not just the "'".
TRANSLATE() is a useful function for replacing or eliminating known single character codes.