What is Teradata?

Teradata is one of the popular Relational Database Management System. It is mainly suitable
for building large scale data warehousing applications. Teradata achieves this by the concept of
parallelism. It is developed by the company called Teradata.

History of Teradata
Following is a quick summary of the history of Teradata, listing major milestones.

1979 Teradata was incorporated.

1984 Release of first database computer DBC/1012.

1986 Fortune magazine names Teradata as Product of the Year.

1999 Largest database in the world using Teradata with 130 Terabytes.

2002 Teradata V2R5 released with Partition Primary Index and compression.

2006 Launch of Teradata Master Data Management solution.

2008 Teradata 13.0 released with Active Data Warehousing.

2011 Acquires Teradata Aster and enters into Advanced Analytics Space.

2012 Teradata 14.0 introduced.

2014 Teradata 15.0 introduced.

Features of Teradata
Following are some of the features of Teradata

Unlimited Parallelism Teradata database system is based on Massively Parallel

Processing (MPP) Architecture. MPP architecture divides the workload evenly across
the entire system. Teradata system splits the task among its processes and runs them in
parallel to ensure that the task is completed quickly.

Shared Nothing Architecture Teradatas architecture is called as Shared Nothing

Architecture. Teradata Nodes, its Access Module Processors (AMPs) and the disks
associated with AMPs work independently. They are not shared with others.

1 | Page
 Linear Scalability Teradata systems are highly scalable. They can scale up to 2048
Nodes. For example, you can double the capacity of the system by doubling the number
of AMPs.

Connectivity Teradata can connect to Channel-attached systems such as Mainframe or

Network-attached systems.

Mature Optimizer Teradata optimizer is one of the matured optimizer in the market.
It has been designed to be parallel since its beginning. It has been refined for each
release.

SQL Teradata supports industry standard SQL to interact with the data stored in tables.
In addition to this, it provides its own extension.

Robust Utilities Teradata provides robust utilities to import/export data from/to

Teradata system such as FastLoad, MultiLoad, FastExport and TPT.

Automatic Distribution Teradata automatically distributes the data evenly to the disks
without any manual intervention.

Teradata - Architecture
Teradata architecture is based on Massively Parallel Processing (MPP) architecture. The major
components of Teradata are Parsing Engine, BYNET and Access Module Processors (AMPs).
The following diagram shows the high level architecture of a Teradata Node.

2 | Page
Components of Teradata
The key components of Teradata are as follows

Node It is the basic unit in Teradata System. Each individual server in a Teradata
system is referred as a Node. A node consists of its own operating system, CPU,
memory, own copy of Teradata RDBMS software and disk space. A cabinet consists of
one or more Nodes.

Parsing Engine Parsing Engine is responsible for receiving queries from the client and
preparing an efficient execution plan. The responsibilities of parsing engine are

o Receive the SQL query from the client

o Parse the SQL query check for syntax errors

o Check if the user has required privilege against the objects used in the SQL query

o Check if the objects used in the SQL actually exists

o Prepare the execution plan to execute the SQL query and pass it to BYNET

3 | Page
 o Receives the results from the AMPs and send to the client

Message Passing Layer Message Passing Layer called as BYNET, is the networking
layer in Teradata system. It allows the communication between PE and AMP and also
between the nodes. It receives the execution plan from Parsing Engine and sends to
AMP. Similarly, it receives the results from the AMPs and sends to Parsing Engine.

Access Module Processor (AMP) AMPs, called as Virtual Processors (vprocs) are the
one that actually stores and retrieves the data. AMPs receive the data and execution plan
from Parsing Engine, performs any data type conversion, aggregation, filter, sorting and
stores the data in the disks associated with them. Records from the tables are evenly
distributed among the AMPs in the system. Each AMP is associated with a set of disks
on which data is stored. Only that AMP can read/write data from the disks.

Storage Architecture
When the client runs queries to insert records, Parsing engine sends the records to BYNET.
BYNET retrieves the records and sends the row to the target AMP. AMP stores these records on
its disks. Following diagram shows the storage architecture of Teradata.

Retrieval Architecture
When the client runs queries to retrieve records, the Parsing engine sends a request to BYNET.
BYNET sends the retrieval request to appropriate AMPs. Then AMPs search their disks in

4 | Page
parallel and identify the required records and sends to BYNET. BYNET then sends the records
to Parsing Engine which in turn will send to the client. Following is the retrieval architecture of
Teradata.

Teradata - Relational Concepts

Relational Database Management System (RDBMS) is a DBMS software that helps to interact
with databases. They use Structured Query Language (SQL) to interact with the data stored in
tables.

Database

Database is a collection of logically related data. They are accessed by many users for different
purposes. For example, a sales database contains entire information about sales which is stored
in many tables.

Tables

Tables is the basic unit in RDBMS where the data is stored. A table is a collection of rows and
columns. Following is an example of employee table.

EmployeeNo FirstName LastName BirthDate

5 | Page
 101 Mike James 1/5/1980

104 Alex Stuart 11/6/1984

102 Robert Williams 3/5/1983

105 Robert James 12/1/1984

103 Peter Paul 4/1/1983

Columns

A column contains similar data. For example, the column BirthDate in Employee table contains
birth_date information for all employees.

BirthDate

1/5/1980

11/6/1984

3/5/1983

12/1/1984

4/1/1983

6 | Page
Row

Row is one instance of all the columns. For example, in employee table one row contains
information about single employee.

EmployeeNo FirstName LastName BirthDate

101 Mike James 1/5/1980

Primary Key

Primary key is used to uniquely identify a row in a table. No duplicate values are allowed in a
primary key column and they cannot accept NULL values. It is a mandatory field in a table.

Foreign Key

Foreign keys are used to build a relationship between the tables. A foreign key in a child table is
defined as the primary key in the parent table. A table can have more than one foreign key. It
can accept duplicate values and also null values. Foreign keys are optional in a table.

Teradata - Data Types

Each column in a table is associated with a data type. Data types specify what kind of values
will be stored in the column. Teradata supports several data types. Following are some of the
frequently used data types.

Data Types Length Range of values

(Bytes)

BYTEINT 1 -128 to +127

SMALLINT 2 -32768 to +32767

INTEGER 4 -2,147,483,648 to +2147,483,647

7 | Page
BIGINT 8 -9,233,372,036,854,775,80 8 to +9,233,372,036,854,775,8 07

DECIMAL 1-16

NUMERIC 1-16

FLOAT 8 IEEE format

CHAR Fixed 1-64,000

Format

VARCHAR Variable 1-64,000

DATE 4 YYYYYMMDD

TIME 6 or 8 HHMMSS.nnnnnn or HHMMSS.nnnnnn+HHMM

TIMESTAMP 10 or 12 YYMMDDHHMMSS.nnnnnn or YYMMDDHHMMSS.nnnnn

n +HHMM

Teradata - Tables

Tables in Relational model are defined as collection of data. They are represented as rows and
columns.

Table Types

Types Teradata supports different types of tables.

Permanent Table This is the default table and it contains data inserted by the user and
stores the data permanently.

8 | Page
 Volatile Table The data inserted into a volatile table is retained only during the user
session. The table and data is dropped at the end of the session. These tables are mainly
used to hold the intermediate data during data transformation.

Global Temporary Table The definition of Global Temporary table are persistent but
the data in the table is deleted at the end of user session.

Derived Table Derived table holds the intermediate results in a query. Their lifetime is
within the query in which they are created, used and dropped.

Set Versus Multiset

Teradata classifies the tables as SET or MULTISET tables based on how the duplicate records
are handled. A table defined as SET table doesnt store the duplicate records, whereas the
MULTISET table can store duplicate records.

Sr.No Table Commands & Description

1 Create Table

CREATE TABLE command is used to create tables in Teradata.

2 Alter Table

ALTER TABLE command is used to add or drop columns from an existing table.

3 Drop Table

DROP TABLE command is used to drop a table.

Teradata - Data Manipulation

This chapter introduces the SQL commands used to manipulate the data stored in Teradata
tables.

Insert Records

9 | Page
INSERT INTO statement is used to insert records into the table.

Syntax

Following is the generic syntax for INSERT INTO.

INSERT INTO <tablename>

(column1, column2, column3,)
VALUES
(value1, value2, value3 );

Example

The following example inserts records into the employee table.

INSERT INTO Employee (

EmployeeNo,
FirstName,
LastName,
BirthDate,
JoinedDate,
DepartmentNo
)
VALUES (
101,
'Mike',
'James',
'1980-01-05',
'2005-03-27',
01
);

Once the above query is inserted, you can use the SELECT statement to view the records from
the table.

10 | P a g e
 EmployeeNo FirstName LastName JoinedDate DepartmentNo BirthDate

101 Mike James 3/27/2005 1 1/5/1980

Insert from Another Table

INSERT SELECT statement is used to insert records from another table.

Syntax

Following is the generic syntax for INSERT INTO.

INSERT INTO <tablename>

(column1, column2, column3,)
SELECT
column1, column2, column3
FROM
<source table>;

Example

The following example inserts records into the employee table. Create a table called
Employee_Bkup with the same column definition as employee table before running the
following insert query.

INSERT INTO Employee_Bkup (

EmployeeNo,
FirstName,
LastName,
BirthDate,
JoinedDate,
DepartmentNo
)
SELECT
EmployeeNo,

11 | P a g e
 FirstName,
LastName,
BirthDate,
JoinedDate,
DepartmentNo
FROM
Employee;

When the above query is executed, it will insert all records from the employee table into
employee_bkup table.

Rules

The number of columns specified in the VALUES list should match with the columns
specified in the INSERT INTO clause.

Values are mandatory for NOT NULL columns.

If no values are specified, then NULL is inserted for nullable fields.

The data types of columns specified in the VALUES clause should be compatible with
the data types of columns in the INSERT clause.

Update Records

UPDATE statement is used to update records from the table.

Syntax

Following is the generic syntax for UPDATE.

UPDATE <tablename>
SET <columnnamme> = <new value>
[WHERE condition];

Example

The following example updates the employee dept to 03 for employee 101.

12 | P a g e
UPDATE Employee
SET DepartmentNo = 03
WHERE EmployeeNo = 101;

In the following output, you can see that the DepartmentNo is updated from 1 to 3 for
EmployeeNo 101.

SELECT Employeeno, DepartmentNo FROM Employee;

*** Query completed. One row found. 2 columns returned.
*** Total elapsed time was 1 second.
EmployeeNo DepartmentNo
----------- -------------
101 3

Rules

You can update one or more values of the table.

If WHERE condition is not specified then all rows of the table are impacted.

You can update a table with the values from another table.

Delete Records

DELETE FROM statement is used to update records from the table.

Syntax

Following is the generic syntax for DELETE FROM.

DELETE FROM <tablename>

[WHERE condition];

Example

The following example deletes the employee 101 from the table employee.

13 | P a g e
DELETE FROM Employee
WHERE EmployeeNo = 101;

In the following output, you can see that employee 101 is deleted from the table.

SELECT EmployeeNo FROM Employee;

*** Query completed. No rows found.
*** Total elapsed time was 1 second.

Rules

You can update one or more records of the table.

If WHERE condition is not specified then all rows of the table are deleted.

You can update a table with the values from another table.

Teradata - SELECT Statement

SELECT statement is used to retrieve records from a table.

Syntax

Following is the basic syntax of SELECT statement.

SELECT
column 1, column 2, .....
FROM
tablename;

Example

Consider the following employee table.

EmployeeNo FirstName LastName JoinedDate DepartmentNo BirthDate

101 Mike James 3/27/2005 1 1/5/1980

102 Robert Williams 4/25/2007 2 3/5/1983

14 | P a g e
 103 Peter Paul 3/21/2007 2 4/1/1983

104 Alex Stuart 2/1/2008 2 11/6/1984

105 Robert James 1/4/2008 3 12/1/1984

Following is an example of SELECT statement.

SELECT EmployeeNo,FirstName,LastName
FROM Employee;

When this query is executed, it fetches EmployeeNo, FirstName and LastName columns from
the employee table.

EmployeeNo FirstName LastName

----------- ------------------------------ ---------------------------
101 Mike James
104 Alex Stuart
102 Robert Williams
105 Robert James
103 Peter Paul

If you want to fetch all the columns from a table, you can use the following command instead of
listing down all columns.

SELECT * FROM Employee;

The above query will fetch all records from the employee table.

WHERE Clause

WHERE clause is used to filter the records returned by the SELECT statement. A condition is
associated with WHERE clause. Only, the records that satisfy the condition in the WHERE
clause are returned.

15 | P a g e
Syntax

Following is the syntax of the SELECT statement with WHERE clause.

SELECT * FROM tablename

WHERE[condition];

Example

The following query fetches records where EmployeeNo is 101.

SELECT * FROM Employee

WHERE EmployeeNo = 101;

When this query is executed, it returns the following records.

EmployeeNo FirstName LastName

----------- ------------------------------ -----------------------------
101 Mike James

ORDER BY

When the SELECT statement is executed, the returned rows are not in any specific order.
ORDER BY clause is used to arrange the records in ascending/descending order on any
columns.

Syntax

Following is the syntax of the SELECT statement with ORDER BY clause.

SELECT * FROM tablename

ORDER BY column 1, column 2..;

Example

The following query fetches records from the employee table and orders the results by
FirstName.

SELECT * FROM Employee

16 | P a g e
ORDER BY FirstName;

When the above query is executed, it produces the following output.

EmployeeNo FirstName LastName

----------- ------------------------------ -----------------------------
104 Alex Stuart
101 Mike James
103 Peter Paul
102 Robert Williams
105 Robert James

GROUP BY

GROUP BY clause is used with SELECT statement and arranges similar records into groups.

Syntax

Following is the syntax of the SELECT statement with GROUP BY clause.

SELECT column 1, column2 . FROM tablename

GROUP BY column 1, column 2..;

Example

The following example groups the records by DepartmentNo column and identifies the total
count from each department.

SELECT DepartmentNo,Count(*) FROM

Employee
GROUP BY DepartmentNo;

When the above query is executed, it produces the following output.

DepartmentNo Count(*)
------------ -----------
3 1
1 1
2 3

17 | P a g e
 Teradata - Logical and Conditional Operators

Teradata supports the following logical and conditional operators. These operators are used to
perform comparison and combine multiple conditions.

Syntax Meaning

> Greater than

< Less than

>= Greater than or equal to

<= Less than or equal to

= Equal to

BETWEEN If values within range

IN If values in <expression>

NOT IN If values not in <expression>

IS NULL If value is NULL

IS NOT NULL If value is NOT NULL

AND Combine multiple conditions. Evaluates to true only if all conditions are
met

OR Combine multiple conditions. Evaluates to true only if either of the

18 | P a g e
 conditions is met.

NOT Reverses the meaning of the condition

BETWEEN

BETWEEN command is used to check if a value is within a range of values.

Example

Consider the following employee table.

EmployeeNo FirstName LastName JoinedDate DepartmentNo BirthDate

101 Mike James 3/27/2005 1 1/5/1980

102 Robert Williams 4/25/2007 2 3/5/1983

103 Peter Paul 3/21/2007 2 4/1/1983

104 Alex Stuart 2/1/2008 2 11/6/1984

105 Robert James 1/4/2008 3 12/1/1984

The following example fetches records with employee numbers in the range between 101,102
and 103.

SELECT EmployeeNo, FirstName FROM

Employee
WHERE EmployeeNo BETWEEN 101 AND 103;

19 | P a g e
When the above query is executed, it returns the employee records with employee no between
101 and 102.

*** Query completed. 3 rows found. 2 columns returned.

*** Total elapsed time was 1 second.
EmployeeNo FirstName
----------- ------------------------------
101 Mike
102 Robert
103 Peter

IN

IN command is used to check the value against a given list of values.

Example

The following example fetches records with employee numbers in 101, 102 and 103.

SELECT EmployeeNo, FirstName FROM

Employee
WHERE EmployeeNo in (101,102,103);

The above query returns the following records.

*** Query completed. 3 rows found. 2 columns returned.

*** Total elapsed time was 1 second.
EmployeeNo FirstName
----------- ------------------------------
101 Mike
102 Robert
103 Peter

NOT IN

NOT IN command reverses the result of IN command. It fetches records with values that dont
match with the given list.

20 | P a g e
Example

The following example fetches records with employee numbers not in 101, 102 and 103.

SELECT * FROM
Employee
WHERE EmployeeNo not in (101,102,103);

The above query returns the following records.

*** Query completed. 2 rows found. 6 columns returned.

*** Total elapsed time was 1 second.
EmployeeNo FirstName LastName
----------- ------------------------------ -----------------------------
104 Alex Stuart
105 Robert James

Teradata - SET Operators

SET operators combine results from multiple SELECT statement. This may look similar to
Joins, but joins combines columns from multiple tables whereas SET operators combines rows
from multiple rows.

Rules

The number of columns from each SELECT statement should be same.

The data types from each SELECT must be compatible.

ORDER BY should be included only in the final SELECT statement.

UNION

UNION statement is used to combine results from multiple SELECT statements. It ignores
duplicates.

Syntax

Following is the basic syntax of the UNION statement.

21 | P a g e
SELECT col1, col2, col3
FROM
<table 1>
[WHERE condition]
UNION

SELECT col1, col2, col3

FROM
<table 2>
[WHERE condition];

Example

Consider the following employee table and salary table.

EmployeeNo FirstName LastName JoinedDate DepartmentNo BirthDate

101 Mike James 3/27/2005 1 1/5/1980

102 Robert Williams 4/25/2007 2 3/5/1983

103 Peter Paul 3/21/2007 2 4/1/1983

104 Alex Stuart 2/1/2008 2 11/6/1984

105 Robert James 1/4/2008 3 12/1/1984

EmployeeNo Gross Deduction NetPay

101 40,000 4,000 36,000

102 80,000 6,000 74,000

103 90,000 7,000 83,000

22 | P a g e
 104 75,000 5,000 70,000

The following UNION query combines the EmployeeNo value from both Employee and Salary
table.

SELECT EmployeeNo
FROM
Employee
UNION

SELECT EmployeeNo
FROM
Salary;

When the query is executed, it produces the following output.

EmployeeNo
-----------
101
102
103
104
105

UNION ALL

UNION ALL statement is similar to UNION, it combines results from multiple tables including
duplicate rows.

Syntax

Following is the basic syntax of the UNION ALL statement.

SELECT col1, col2, col3

FROM
<table 1>

23 | P a g e
[WHERE condition]
UNION ALL

SELECT col1, col2, col3

FROM
<table 2>
[WHERE condition];

Example

Following is an example for UNION ALL statement.

SELECT EmployeeNo
FROM
Employee
UNION ALL

SELECT EmployeeNo
FROM
Salary;

When the above query is executed, it produces the following output. You can see that it returns
the duplicates also.

EmployeeNo
-----------
101
104
102
105
103
101
104
102
103

INTERSECT

24 | P a g e
INTERSECT command is also used to combine results from multiple SELECT statements. It
returns the rows from the first SELECT statement that has corresponding match in the second
SELECT statements. In other words, it returns the rows that exist in both SELECT statements.

Syntax

Following is the basic syntax of the INTERSECT statement.

SELECT col1, col2, col3

FROM
<table 1>
[WHERE condition]
INTERSECT

SELECT col1, col2, col3

FROM
<table 2>
[WHERE condition];

Example

Following is an example of INTERSECT statement. It returns the EmployeeNo values that exist
in both tables.

SELECT EmployeeNo
FROM
Employee
INTERSECT

SELECT EmployeeNo
FROM
Salary;

When the above query is executed, it returns the following records. EmployeeNo 105 is
excluded since it doesnt exist in SALARY table.

EmployeeNo
-----------

25 | P a g e
 101
104
102
103

MINUS/EXCEPT

MINUS/EXCEPT commands combine rows from multiple tables and returns the rows which
are in first SELECT but not in second SELECT. They both return the same results.

Syntax

Following is the basic syntax of the MINUS statement.

SELECT col1, col2, col3

FROM
<table 1>
[WHERE condition]
MINUS

SELECT col1, col2, col3

FROM
<table 2>
[WHERE condition];

Example

Following is an example of MINUS statement.

SELECT EmployeeNo
FROM
Employee
MINUS

SELECT EmployeeNo

26 | P a g e
FROM
Salary;

When this query is executed, it returns the following record.

EmployeeNo
-----------
105

Teradata - String Manipulation

Teradata provides several functions to manipulate the strings. These functions are compatible
with ANSI standard.

Sr.No String Function & Description

1 ||

Concatenates strings together

2 SUBSTR

Extracts a portion of a string (Teradata extension)

3 SUBSTRING

Extracts a portion of a string (ANSI standard)

4 INDEX

Locates the position of a character in a string (Teradata extension)

5 POSITION

Locates the position of a character in a string (ANSI standard)

27 | P a g e
6 TRIM

Trims blanks from a string

7 UPPER

Converts a string to uppercase

8 LOWER

Converts a string to lowercase

Example

Following table lists some of the string functions with the results.

String Function Result

SELECT SUBSTRING(warehouse FROM 1 FOR 4) ware

SELECT SUBSTR(warehouse,1,4) ware

SELECT data || || warehouse data warehouse

SELECT UPPER(data) DATA

SELECT LOWER(DATA) data

Teradata - Date/Time Functions

This chapter discusses the date/time functions available in Teradata.

Date Storage

28 | P a g e
Dates are stored as integer internally using the following formula.

((YEAR - 1900) * 10000) + (MONTH * 100) + DAY

You can use the following query to check how the dates are stored.

SELECT CAST(CURRENT_DATE AS INTEGER);

Since the dates are stored as integer, you can perform some arithmetic operations on them.
Teradata provides functions to perform these operations.

EXTRACT

EXTRACT function extracts portions of day, month and year from a DATE value. This function
is also used to extract hour, minute and second from TIME/TIMESTAMP value.

Example

Following examples show how to extract Year, Month, Date, Hour, Minute and second values
from Date and Timestamp values.

SELECT EXTRACT(YEAR FROM CURRENT_DATE);

EXTRACT(YEAR FROM Date)
-----------------------
2016
SELECT EXTRACT(MONTH FROM CURRENT_DATE);
EXTRACT(MONTH FROM Date)
------------------------
1
SELECT EXTRACT(DAY FROM CURRENT_DATE);
EXTRACT(DAY FROM Date)
------------------------
1

29 | P a g e
SELECT EXTRACT(HOUR FROM CURRENT_TIMESTAMP);
EXTRACT(HOUR FROM Current TimeStamp(6))
---------------------------------------
4
SELECT EXTRACT(MINUTE FROM CURRENT_TIMESTAMP);
EXTRACT(MINUTE FROM Current TimeStamp(6))
-----------------------------------------
54
SELECT EXTRACT(SECOND FROM CURRENT_TIMESTAMP);
EXTRACT(SECOND FROM Current TimeStamp(6))
-----------------------------------------
27.140000

INTERVAL

Teradata provides INTERVAL function to perform arithmetic operations on DATE and TIME
values. There are two types of INTERVAL functions.

Year-Month Interval

YEAR

YEAR TO MONTH

MONTH
Day-Time Interval

DAY

DAY TO HOUR

DAY TO MINUTE

DAY TO SECOND

30 | P a g e
 HOUR

HOUR TO MINUTE

HOUR TO SECOND

MINUTE

MINUTE TO SECOND

SECOND
Example

The following example adds 3 years to current date.

SELECT CURRENT_DATE, CURRENT_DATE + INTERVAL '03' YEAR;

Date (Date+ 3)
-------- ---------
16/01/01 19/01/01

The following example adds 3 years and 01 month to current date.

SELECT CURRENT_DATE, CURRENT_DATE + INTERVAL '03-01' YEAR TO MONTH;

Date (Date+ 3-01)
-------- ------------
16/01/01 19/02/01

The following example adds 01 day, 05 hours and 10 minutes to current timestamp.

SELECT CURRENT_TIMESTAMP,CURRENT_TIMESTAMP + INTERVAL '01 05:10' DAY

TO MINUTE;
Current TimeStamp(6) (Current TimeStamp(6)+ 1 05:10)
-------------------------------- --------------------------------
2016-01-01 04:57:26.360000+00:00 2016-01-02 10:07:26.360000+00:00

31 | P a g e
 Teradata - Built-in Functions
Teradata provides built-in functions which are extensions to SQL. Following are the common
built-in functions.

Function Result

Date
SELECT DATE; --------
16/01/01

Date
SELECT CURRENT_DATE; --------
16/01/01

Time
SELECT TIME; --------
04:50:29

Time
SELECT CURRENT_TIME; --------
04:50:29

Current TimeStamp(6)
SELECT CURRENT_TIMESTAMP; --------------------------------
2016-01-01 04:51:06.990000+00:00

Database
SELECT DATABASE; ------------------------------
TDUSER

Teradata - Aggregate Functions

Teradata supports common aggregate functions. They can be used with the SELECT statement.

COUNT Counts the rows

SUM Sums up the values of the specified column(s)

32 | P a g e
 MAX Returns the large value of the specified column

MIN Returns the minimum value of the specified column

AVG Returns the average value of the specified column

Example
Consider the following Salary Table.

EmployeeNo Gross Deduction NetPay

101 40,000 4,000 36,000

104 75,000 5,000 70,000

102 80,000 6,000 74,000

105 70,000 4,000 66,000

103 90,000 7,000 83,000

COUNT
The following example counts the number of records in the Salary table.

SELECT count(*) from Salary;

Count(*)
-----------
5

MAX
The following example returns maximum employee net salary value.

SELECT max(NetPay) from Salary;

33 | P a g e
 Maximum(NetPay)
---------------------
83000

MIN
The following example returns minimum employee net salary value from the Salary table.

SELECT min(NetPay) from Salary;

Minimum(NetPay)
---------------------
36000

AVG
The following example returns the average of employees net salary value from the table.

SELECT avg(NetPay) from Salary;

Average(NetPay)
---------------------
65800

SUM
The following example calculates the sum of employees net salary from all records of the
Salary table.

SELECT sum(NetPay) from Salary;

Sum(NetPay)
-----------------
329000

Teradata - CASE and COALESCE

This chapter explains the CASE and COALESCE functions of Teradata.

34 | P a g e
CASE Expression

CASE expression evaluates each row against a condition or WHEN clause and returns the result
of the first match. If there are no matches then the result from ELSE part of returned.

Syntax

Following is the syntax of the CASE expression.

CASE <expression>
WHEN <expression> THEN result-1
WHEN <expression> THEN result-2

ELSE
Result-n
END

Example

Consider the following Employee table.

EmployeeNo FirstName LastName JoinedDate DepartmentNo BirthDate

101 Mike James 3/27/2005 1 1/5/1980

102 Robert Williams 4/25/2007 2 3/5/1983

103 Peter Paul 3/21/2007 2 4/1/1983

104 Alex Stuart 2/1/2008 2 11/6/1984

105 Robert James 1/4/2008 3 12/1/1984

The following example evaluates the DepartmentNo column and returns value of 1 if the
department number is 1; returns 2 if the department number is 3; otherwise it returns value as
invalid department.

35 | P a g e
SELECT
EmployeeNo,
CASE DepartmentNo
WHEN 1 THEN 'Admin'
WHEN 2 THEN 'IT'
ELSE 'Invalid Dept'
END AS Department
FROM Employee;

When the above query is executed, it produces the following output.

*** Query completed. 5 rows found. 2 columns returned.

*** Total elapsed time was 1 second.
EmployeeNo Department
----------- ------------
101 Admin
104 IT
102 IT
105 Invalid Dept
103 IT

The above CASE expression can also be written in the following form which will produce the
same result as above.

SELECT
EmployeeNo,
CASE
WHEN DepartmentNo = 1 THEN 'Admin'
WHEN DepartmentNo = 2 THEN 'IT'
ELSE 'Invalid Dept'
END AS Department
FROM Employee;

COALESCE

COALESCE is a statement that returns the first non-null value of the expression. It returns
NULL if all the arguments of the expression evaluates to NULL. Following is the syntax.

36 | P a g e
Syntax
COALESCE(expression 1, expression 2, ....)

Example
SELECT
EmployeeNo,
COALESCE(dept_no, 'Department not found')
FROM
employee;

NULLIF

NULLIF statement returns NULL if the arguments are equal.

Syntax

Following is the syntax of the NULLIF statement.

NULLIF(expression 1, expression 2)

Example

The following example returns NULL if the DepartmentNo is equal to 3. Otherwise, it returns
the DepartmentNo value.

SELECT
EmployeeNo,
NULLIF(DepartmentNo,3) AS department
FROM Employee;

The above query returns the following records. You can see that employee 105 has department
no. as NULL.

*** Query completed. 5 rows found. 2 columns returned.

*** Total elapsed time was 1 second.
EmployeeNo department
----------- ------------------

37 | P a g e
 101 1
104 2
102 2
105 ?
103 2

Teradata - Primary Index

Primary index is used to specify where the data resides in Teradata. It is used to specify which
AMP gets the data row. Each table in Teradata is required to have a primary index defined. If
the primary index is not defined, Teradata automatically assigns the primary index. Primary
index provides the fastest way to access the data. A primary may have a maximum of 64
columns.

Primary index is defined while creating a table. There are 2 types of Primary Indexes.

Unique Primary Index(UPI)

Non Unique Primary Index(NUPI)

Unique Primary Index (UPI)

If the table is defined to be having UPI, then the column deemed as UPI should not have any
duplicate values. If any duplicate values are inserted, they will be rejected.

Create Unique Primary Index

The following example creates the Salary table with column EmployeeNo as Unique Primary
Index.

CREATE SET TABLE Salary (

EmployeeNo INTEGER,
Gross INTEGER,
Deduction INTEGER,
NetPay INTEGER
)
UNIQUE PRIMARY INDEX(EmployeeNo);

38 | P a g e
Non Unique Primary Index (NUPI)

If the table is defined to be having NUPI, then the column deemed as UPI can accept duplicate
values.

Create Non Unique Primary Index

The following example creates the employee accounts table with column EmployeeNo as Non
Unique Primary Index. EmployeeNo is defined as Non Unique Primary Index since an
employee can have multiple accounts in the table; one for salary account and another one for
reimbursement account.

CREATE SET TABLE Employee _Accounts (

EmployeeNo INTEGER,
employee_bank_account_type BYTEINT.
employee_bank_account_number INTEGER,
employee_bank_name VARCHAR(30),
employee_bank_city VARCHAR(30)
)
PRIMARY INDEX(EmployeeNo);

Teradata - Joins

Join is used to combine records from more than one table. Tables are joined based on the
common columns/values from these tables.

There are different types of Joins available.

Inner Join

Left Outer Join

Right Outer Join

Full Outer Join

Self Join

39 | P a g e
 Cross Join

Cartesian Production Join

INNER JOIN

Inner Join combines records from multiple tables and returns the values that exist in both the
tables.

Syntax

Following is the syntax of the INNER JOIN statement.

SELECT col1, col2, col3.

FROM
Table-1
INNER JOIN
Table-2
ON (col1 = col2)
<WHERE condition>;

Example

Consider the following employee table and salary table.

EmployeeNo FirstName LastName JoinedDate DepartmentNo BirthDate

101 Mike James 3/27/2005 1 1/5/1980

102 Robert Williams 4/25/2007 2 3/5/1983

103 Peter Paul 3/21/2007 2 4/1/1983

104 Alex Stuart 2/1/2008 2 11/6/1984

105 Robert James 1/4/2008 3 12/1/1984

40 | P a g e
 EmployeeNo Gross Deduction NetPay

101 40,000 4,000 36,000

102 80,000 6,000 74,000

103 90,000 7,000 83,000

104 75,000 5,000 70,000

The following query joins the Employee table and Salary table on the common column
EmployeeNo. Each table is assigned an alias A & B and the columns are referenced with the
correct alias.

SELECT A.EmployeeNo, A.DepartmentNo, B.NetPay

FROM
Employee A
INNER JOIN
Salary B
ON (A.EmployeeNo = B. EmployeeNo);

When the above query is executed, it returns the following records. Employee 105 is not
included in the result since it doesnt have matching records in the Salary table.

*** Query completed. 4 rows found. 3 columns returned.

*** Total elapsed time was 1 second.
EmployeeNo DepartmentNo NetPay
----------- ------------ -----------
101 1 36000
102 2 74000
103 2 83000
104 2 70000

OUTER JOIN

41 | P a g e
LEFT OUTER JOIN and RIGHT OUTER JOIN also combine the results from multiple table.

LEFT OUTER JOIN returns all the records from the left table and returns only the
matching records from the right table.

RIGHT OUTER JOIN returns all the records from the right table and returns only
matching rows from the left table.

FULL OUTER JOIN combines the results from both LEFT OUTER and RIGHT
OUTER JOINS. It returns both matching and non-matching rows from the joined tables.

Syntax

Following is the syntax of the OUTER JOIN statement. You need to use one of the options from
LEFT OUTER JOIN, RIGHT OUTER JOIN or FULL OUTER JOIN.

SELECT col1, col2, col3.

FROM
Table-1
LEFT OUTER JOIN/RIGHT OUTER JOIN/FULL OUTER JOIN
Table-2
ON (col1 = col2)
<WHERE condition>;

Example

Consider the following example of the LEFT OUTER JOIN query. It returns all the records
from Employee table and matching records from Salary table.

SELECT A.EmployeeNo, A.DepartmentNo, B.NetPay

FROM
Employee A
LEFT OUTER JOIN
Salary B
ON (A.EmployeeNo = B. EmployeeNo)
ORDER BY A.EmployeeNo;

42 | P a g e
When the above query is executed, it produces the following output. For employee 105, NetPay
value is NULL, since it doesnt have matching records in Salary table.

*** Query completed. 5 rows found. 3 columns returned.

*** Total elapsed time was 1 second.
EmployeeNo DepartmentNo NetPay
----------- ------------ -----------
101 1 36000
102 2 74000
103 2 83000
104 2 70000
105 3 ?

CROSS JOIN

Cross Join joins every row from the left table to every row from the right table.

Syntax

Following is the syntax of the CROSS JOIN statement.

SELECT A.EmployeeNo, A.DepartmentNo, B.EmployeeNo,B.NetPay

FROM
Employee A
CROSS JOIN
Salary B
WHERE A.EmployeeNo = 101
ORDER BY B.EmployeeNo;

When the above query is executed, it produces the following output. Employee No 101 from
Employee table is joined with each and every record from Salary Table.

*** Query completed. 4 rows found. 4 columns returned.

*** Total elapsed time was 1 second.
EmployeeNo DepartmentNo EmployeeNo NetPay
----------- ------------ ----------- -----------
101 1 101 36000
101 1 104 70000
101 1 102 74000
101 1 103 83000

43 | P a g e
 Teradata - SubQueries
A subquery returns records from one table based on the values from another table. It is a
SELECT query within another query. The SELECT query called as inner query is executed first
and the result is used by the outer query. Some of its salient features are

A query can have multiple subqueries and subqueries may contain another subquery.

Subqueries doesn't return duplicate records.

If subquery returns only one value, you can use = operator to use it with the outer query.
If it returns multiple values you can use IN or NOT IN.

Syntax
Following is the generic syntax of subqueries.

SELECT col1, col2, col3,

FROM
Outer Table
WHERE col1 OPERATOR ( Inner SELECT Query);

Example
Consider the following Salary table.

EmployeeNo Gross Deduction NetPay

101 40,000 4,000 36,000

102 80,000 6,000 74,000

103 90,000 7,000 83,000

104 75,000 5,000 70,000

The following query identifies the employee number with highest salary. The inner SELECT
performs the aggregation function to return the maximum NetPay value and the outer SELECT
query uses this value to return the employee record with this value.

44 | P a g e
SELECT EmployeeNo, NetPay
FROM Salary
WHERE NetPay =
(SELECT MAX(NetPay)
FROM Salary);

When this query is executed, it produces the following output.

*** Query completed. One row found. 2 columns returned.

*** Total elapsed time was 1 second.
EmployeeNo NetPay
----------- -----------
103 83000

45 | P a g e