Introduction to SAS/ACCESS Interface to Teradata

Overview

For available SAS/ACCESS features, see Teradata supported features. For more information about Teradata, see your Teradata documentation.

SAS/ACCESS Interface to Teradata includes SAS Data Connector to Teradata. If you have the appropriate license, you might also have access to the SAS Data Connect Accelerator to Teradata. The data connector or data connect accelerator enables you to load data into the CAS server for parallel processing. For more information, see these sections:

• Where to Specify Data Connector Options in SAS Cloud Analytic Services: User’s Guide
• Teradata Data Connector in SAS Cloud Analytic Services: User’s Guide

The SAS/ACCESS Teradata Client

Teradata is a massively parallel (MPP) RDBMS. A high-end Teradata server supports many users. It simultaneously loads and extracts table data and processes complex queries.

Because Teradata customers run many processors at the same time for queries of the database, users enjoy excellent DBMS server performance. The challenge to client software, such as SAS, is to leverage Teradata performance by rapidly extracting and loading table data. SAS/ACCESS Interface to Teradata meets this challenge by letting you optimize extracts and loads (reads and creates).

Information throughout this document explains how you can use the SAS/ACCESS interface to optimize DBMS operations.

• It supports the Teradata Parallel Transporter (TPT) API on Windows and UNIX. This API uses the Teradata Load, Update, and Stream operators to load data and the export operator to read data.
• It can create and update Teradata tables. It supports a FastLoad interface that rapidly creates new table. It can also potentially optimize table reads by using FastExport for the highest possible read performance.
• It supports MultiLoad, which loads both empty and existing Teradata tables and greatly accelerates the speed of insertion into Teradata tables. Upsert processing is also supported using the MultiLoad interface.

Restrictions for the ACCESS and DBLOAD Procedures

SAS/ACCESS Interface to Teradata does not support the ACCESS and DBLOAD procedures. The LIBNAME engine technology enhances and replaces the functionality of these procedures. Therefore, you must revise SAS jobs that were written for a different SAS/ACCESS interface and that include ACCESS or DBLOAD procedures. You need to do this revision before you can run the SAS jobs with SAS/ACCESS Interface to Teradata.