I use Enterprise Guide a lot to model data before I expose it to the SAS Metadata Server to create prototype reports using Information Maps and Web Report Studio etc.

Its often said it is ok to make a mistake, but not to make it twice as you haven’t learnt from your mistakes, well here is one mistake that I constantly make when doing the above process (I blame my failing memory due to age).

Enterprise Guide allows you to create new datasets where the variable (column) name has a space in it. The SAS Metadata Server does not like these at all. The problem is it imports the metadata for the dataset fine, its just when you go to view the data all you see is the number of rows, but no columns and no data.

It doesn’t matter if you access the dataset in Enterprise Guide ( via the Metadata Server of course) or use view data in the SAS Management Console, all you see is blank rows.

But drag the exact same table directly into Enterprise Guide and its all hunky dory.

Of course I then spend ages going through metadata security assuming I have read metadata rights but not read data rights and that is whats causing the problem.

Finally I will work out that I had a space in the column name, fix it and wallah. So I thought i’d blog about it just in case anybody else strikes the problem (or I at least remember to check my blog next time).

Oh and if you try and view data in Data Integration Studio you will get this error:

Warning: No rows returned by columns query for table DIM_ORG , no columns registered.
Warning: No rows returned by columns query for table DIM_ORG_OPERATIONS , no columns registered.

(at least one of the SAS interfaces reports that their is actually a problem, yah DI development team!)