RoboTask forum

Hey Oleg,

I have a database set loop where the results are being saved to a TXT file. Works all fine. However, some output is:

"9038926B ?????????? ?? ??????? item name"

And it should be this:

9038926B Инструкция по монтажу item name

The data in the database is correctly saved (with the Russian text), so for sure, this is a characater set issue. In my SQL connection string, I've played a lot of with

Provider=SQLOLEDB.1;Integrated Security=SSPI;Persist Security Info=False;Initial Catalog={SQLCat};Data Source={SQLSERVER};Charset=ANSI;
Provider=SQLOLEDB.1;Integrated Security=SSPI;Persist Security Info=False;Initial Catalog={SQLCat};Data Source={SQLSERVER};Charset=UTF8;
Provider=SQLOLEDB.1;Integrated Security=SSPI;Persist Security Info=False;Initial Catalog={SQLCat};Data Source={SQLSERVER};Charset=UTF-8;

and all other types, but the outcome is still with the "?" signs.
Also adding

SELECT * FROM [{SQLCat}].[Dev].[ServiceAppView] WHERE FileId = 24345
CONVERT TO CHARACTER SET utf8

for example didn't help.

Any suggestions?

It seems the database code page and system code page do not match.
Are you sure that your database has UTF-8 format?

Can this be something? I've tried

Provider=SQLOLEDB.1;Integrated Security=SSPI;Persist Security Info=False;Initial Catalog={SQLCat};Data Source={SQLSERVER};Charset=Latin1;

but the result is the same.

Your database must have Cyrillic charset (windows-1251) if information contains cyrillic symbols.
Otherwise you will get ??? instead of non-latin symbols

Another way
You have to design your database with UTF-8 charset if you want to save any non-ASCII symbols

For example MySQL database creates new database with UTF8 character set by default. You can save in such database any available symbols without problem

Allright. Thanks for the info. I will convert it.

For what is worth, I did it another way.

I did not get permission to convert the database, the risk was too high. Which I can understand!

Although I didn't prefer the method, I've used Excel and connected it to the database (just a SQL query) the export the requested data. I deleted the Dataset Loop function in the task. I have to say: it works fine, fast and it has the cyrillic characters (even Chinese).

The task is now even smaller regarding the amount of steps and it's faster.