Sunday, December 14, 2014

Teradata Utilities - Basics


Comparison of the Teradata loading utilities

The article contains comparison and main features of the data loading tools provided by Teradata. The tutorial illustrates main features of Teradata Multiload , FastLoad and TPump (Parallel Data Pump) and provides sample real-life uses of those tools.

Scroll down for the sample scripts which illustrate different ways to load a sample fixed-length extract into a Teradata database using FastLoad, MultiLoad and Parallel Data Pump (TPump). 

Teradata Fast Load



  • Main use: to load empty tables at high speed.
  • The target tables must be empty in order to use FastLoad
  • Supports inserts only - it is not possible to perform updates or deletes in FastLoad
  • Although Fastload uses multiple sessions to load the data, only one target table can be processed at a time
  • Teradata Fastload does not support join indexes, foreign key references in target tables and tables with secondary index defined. It is necessary to drop any of the constraints listed before loading and recreate them afterwards.
  • The maximum number of concurrent Teradata Fastload tasks can be adjusted by a system administrator.
  • Fastload runs in two operating modes: Interactive and Batch
  • Duplicate rows will not be loaded

    Teradata Multi Load

  • Main use: Load, update and delete large tables in Teradata in a bulk mode
  • Efficient in loading very large tables
  • Multiple tables can be loaded at a time.
  • Updates data in a database in a block mode (one physical write can update multiple rows)
  • Uses table-level locks
  • Resource consumption: loading at the highest possible throughput
  • Duplicate rows allowed

    TERADATA PARALLEL DATA PUMP (TPUMP)

  • Main use: to load or update a small amount of target table rows
  • Sends data to a database as a statement which is much slower than using bulk mode
  • TPump uses row-level hash locks
  • Resource consumption: loading speed can be adjusted using a built-in resource consumption management utility. The throughput can be turned down in peak periods.
  • TPump does not support MULTI-SET tables.
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