RODBC in Ubuntu truncates text strings to 255 characters

Question

I am using RODBC installed on Ubuntu 16.0.4, and I am porting my Windows-based R project/package to this Linux environment. I am running into the issue where sqlQuery returns only the first 255 characters of a text string from an MS SQL Server database. I have found many references to this issue, and I have changed the column type in the database to nvarchar(3500) to presumably solve this issue. This was not a problem in the Windows environment. I cannot seem to get around this 255 character limit, in spite of many folks saying that changing the column variable type to nvarchar(4000) or less, would solve this. I've tried many things, including the cast(...as nvarchar(1000)), for instance, to no avail.

Where am I going wrong?

What about using JDBC drivers in stead of ODBC drivers? – Heikki Dec 16 '17 at 21:00 — Heikki, Dec 16 '17 at 21:00
See my fix below. I did switch drivers, but not to JDBC. – Peter B Dec 16 '17 at 23:46 — Peter B, Dec 16 '17 at 23:46

score 1 · Answer 1 · answered Dec 16 '17 at 23:45

1

I was using FreeTDS. I switched to native MS SQL Server drivers, and this fixed the issue. I do not know where the problem lies, but replacing FreeTDS with the MS drivers for SQL server did the trick.

answered Dec 16 '17 at 23:45

Peter B

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RODBC in Ubuntu truncates text strings to 255 characters

1 Answers1