The following figure shows how the Teradata Named Pipes Access Module works with client load and unload utilities.
Data Flow Between Named Pipes and Load/Unload Utilities
A writer process writes an input data stream to a specified pipe either directly or through the Teradata Data Connector API. In response to requests from a reader process, the Teradata Access Module for Named Pipes does the following:
- Reads the data from the specified pipe
- Copies it to the fallback data file
- Submits it to the reader process
The Teradata Access Module for Named Pipes can also read data from an ordinary file or from a file descriptor file system device on UNIX systems. However, using the module with an ordinary file is not recommended and does not yield the same performance as using a flat file without the access module.
The Teradata Access Module for Named Pipes supports only read operations from a named pipe. You cannot use the Teradata Access Module for Named Pipes to write to a pipe. Additionally, the access module is a block data transfer module; it is neither data-type nor record sensitive.