Teradata – FastExport

FastExport utility is used to export data from Teradata tables into flat files. It can also generate the data in report format. Data can be extracted from one or more tables using Join. Since FastExport exports the data in 64K blocks, it is useful for extracting large volume of data.

Example

Consider the following Employee table.

EmployeeNoFirstNameLastNameBirthDate
101MikeJames1/5/1980
104AlexStuart11/6/1984
102RobertWilliams3/5/1983
105RobertJames12/1/1984
103PeterPaul4/1/1983

Following is an example of a FastExport script. It exports data from employee table and writes into a file employeedata.txt.

.LOGTABLE tduser.employee_log;  
.LOGON 192.168.1.102/dbc,dbc;  
   DATABASE tduser;  
   .BEGIN EXPORT SESSIONS 2;  
      .EXPORT OUTFILE employeedata.txt  
      MODE RECORD FORMAT TEXT;
      SELECT CAST(EmployeeNo AS CHAR(10)), 
         CAST(FirstName AS CHAR(15)), 
         CAST(LastName AS CHAR(15)), 
         CAST(BirthDate AS CHAR(10))   
      FROM
      Employee;
   .END EXPORT;
.LOGOFF;

Executing a FastExport Script

Once the script is written and named as employee.fx, you can use the following command to execute the script.

fexp < employee.fx

After executing the above command, you will receive the following output in the file employeedata.txt.

103       Peter          Paul           1983-04-01 
101       Mike           James          1980-01-05 
102       Robert         Williams       1983-03-05 
105       Robert         James          1984-12-01 
104       Alex           Stuart         1984-11-06

FastExport Terms

Following is the list of terms commonly used in FastExport script.

  • LOGTABLE − Specifies the log table for restart purpose.
  • LOGON − Logs into Teradata and initiates one or more sessions.
  • DATABASE − Sets the default database.
  • BEGIN EXPORT − Indicates the beginning of the export.
  • EXPORT − Specifies the target file and the export format.
  • SELECT − Specifies the select query to export data.
  • END EXPORT − Specifies the end of FastExport.
  • LOGOFF − Ends all sessions and terminates FastExport.

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