[DB-SIG] unicode woes.

[M.-A. Lemburg]

jeff sacksteder wrote:
> Access 2000 and it's newer ilk use unicode for memo fields. Python's DBI 
> chokes when reading data out of such fields, producing an error like this-
> 'Invalid character value for cast specification on column number 7'. 
> 
> I can state with certainty that there should be no non-ascii characters in 
> those fields. Is there a way to alter the unicode 'cast'-ing step to drop 
> unparsable characters?
> 
> Whereabouts is that handled in DBI?

I'm not sure which DB interface you are talking about, but
I can assure you that mxODBC doesn't have those problems:
it will happily read and write Unicode to Access.

For backwards compatiblity reasons, mxODBC runs in 8-bit only
mode if not told otherwise. To have mxODBC connections run
in native Unicode mode you have to set them up using the
.stringformat attribute:

    connection = mx.ODBC.Windows.DriverConnect(...)
    connection.stringformat = mx.ODBC.Windows.NATIVE_UNICODE_STRINGFORMAT
    # or
    connection.stringformat = mx.ODBC.Windows.MIXED_STRINGFORMAT

For more information, have a look at the data types section
and the connection.stringformat documentation:

    http://www.egenix.com/files/python/mxODBC.html#Datatypes

Hope that helps,
-- 
Marc-Andre Lemburg
eGenix.com

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