SQL Access to the Data Dictionary - Advanced SQL Engine - Teradata Database

Every time you log on to Teradata Database, perform an SQL query, or type a password, you are using the Data Dictionary.

For security and data integrity reasons, the only SQL DML command you can use on the Data Dictionary is the SELECT statement. You cannot use the INSERT, UPDATE, MERGE, or DELETE SQL statements to alter the Data Dictionary, except for some Data Dictionary tables, such as the AccLogTbl table or the EventLog table.

The Data Dictionary contains Unicode system views. However, to maintain backwards compatibility, Teradata provides compatibility system views to translate object names to the Kanji1/Latin. For more information on Unicode and compatibility system views, see Teradata Vantage™ - Data Dictionary and Teradata Vantage™ - Database Administration.

You can use SELECT to examine any view in the Data Dictionary to which your database administrator has granted you access. For example, if you need to access information in the Personnel database, then you can query the DBC.DatabasesV view as shown:

SELECT Databasename,
         Creatorname,
         Ownername,
         Permspace
  FROM DBC.DatabasesV
  WHERE Databasename=’Personnel’
  ;

The query above produces a report like this:

Databasename		Creatorname		Ownername		Permspace
Personnel	   	Jones		      Jones	        1,000,000