Network-Attached Runtime Parameters - FastLoad

Teradata FastLoad Reference

Product
FastLoad
Release Number
16.10
Published
May 2017
Language
English (United States)
Last Update
2018-05-18
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B035-2411
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previous
Product Category
Teradata Tools and Utilities

The following table describes the runtime parameters used by Teradata FastLoad.

Using these Teradata FastLoad runtime parameters will override configuration parameter settings.

Runtime Parameters (Network-Attached Systems)
Parameter Description
-b kilobytes Output buffer size specification, where kilobytes is the size of the output buffer, in kilobytes, that will be used for Teradata FastLoad messages to the Teradata Database.

The output buffer size and the size of the rows in the Teradata FastLoad table determine the maximum number of rows that can be included in each message to the Teradata Database. A larger buffer size reduces processing overhead by including more data in each message.

The default buffer size is also the maximum size allowed, 63 KB. If a value greater than 63 KB is specified, Teradata FastLoad:
  • Responds with a warning message
  • Resets the buffer size back to the default value
  • Continues with the Teradata FastLoad job
-c character-set-name Character set specification for the Teradata FastLoad job.

A character set name, as described in Character Set Specification can be specified.

Character set specification remains in effect for the entire Teradata FastLoad job, even if the Teradata Database server resets, causing the Teradata FastLoad job to be restarted.

The character set specification does not remain in effect if the client system fails, or if the Teradata FastLoad job is cancelled. In these cases, when a job is resubmitted, it must use the same character set specification that was used on the initial job. If a different character set specification is used when the job is resubmitted, the data loaded by the restarted job will not appear the same as the data loaded by the initial job.

When a particular character set is specified, the identifiers and data in that character set can be specified, thus affecting how the data is loaded into the Teradata FastLoad table.

If a character set specification is not entered, the default is whatever character set that is specified for the Teradata Database whenever Teradata FastLoad is invoked.

The order in which the character set is determined for a Teradata FastLoad job is as follows:

  1. User-specified by either a runtime parameter on mainframe-attached systems or a SET SESSION CHARSET command on network-attached systems
  2. System Parameter Block (SPB) specified by either the HSHSPB on mainframe-attached systems or the clispb.dat file on network-attached systems
  3. Teradata Database default, determined by a query from Teradata FastLoad
When using UTF-16client character set on the network, the client character set name needs to be specified by the runtime parameter (for example, -c UTF-16). UTF16 is also a valid value.
-d Used to display FastLoad execution debugging information to the standard output
-i scriptencoding Specifies the encoding form of the job script.

The parameter is introduced for use with the UTF-16 client character set, so it is only valid when UTF-16 client character set is used. If the client character set being used is not UTF-16 and the parameter is specified, Teradata FastLoad reports an error and terminates.

Valid encoding options follow:
  • UTF-8 or UTF8
  • UTF-16BE, or UTF16-BE, or UTF16BE
  • UTF-16LE, or UTF16-LE, or UTF16LE
  • UTF-16 or UTF16
  • UTF-8 indicates the job script is in UTF-8 character set.
  • UTF-16 indicates the job script is in UTF-16 character set without specifying the endianness.
  • UTF-16BE indicates the job script is in big endian UTF-16 character set.
  • UTF-16LE indicates the job script is in little endian UTF-16 character set.

Or, if UTF-16LE is specified but the UTF-16 Byte Order Mark (BOM) in the script file indicates the script is in big endian, Teradata FastLoad reports an error and terminates.

The UTF-16 or UTF-8 BOM can be present or absent in the script file. Specify the input script format with -i runtime parameter (mandatory) and specify session character set with -c runtime parameter (mandatory) to ensure that the BOM in the script file can be processed correctly.

When UTF-16 is specified and the UTF-16 BOM is present in the script file, Teradata FastLoad interprets the script according to the endianness indicated by the UTF-16 BOM. When the UTF-16 BOM is not present, Teradata FastLoad interprets the script according to the endianness indicated by the option value. If the endianness is not indicated by the option value (for example, UTF-16 is specified instead of UTF16-BE or UTF-16LE), Teradata FastLoad interprets the job script in UTF-16 according to the endianness of the client system where the Teradata FastLoad job invoked. The specified encoding character set applies to all script files included by the .RUN FILE commands.

When this runtime parameter is not specified and UTF-16 client character is used, Teradata FastLoad interprets the job script in UTF-16. When UTF-8 is specified, Teradata FastLoad interprets the job script in UTF-8 and converts SQL and DML statements in the script from UTF-8 to UTF16 before sending the SQL and DML statements to Teradata Database.
If the script is encoded in UTF-8 and the session character set specified is UTF-8, then -i UTF-8 must be specified, meaning the job must be run as “fastload -c UTF8 -i UTF8.”
-u outputencoding Specifies the encoding form of the job output.

The parameter is introduced for being used for UTF-16 client character set so it is only valid when UTF-16 client character set is used. If the client character set being used is not UTF-16 and the parameter is specified, Teradata FastLoad reports an error and terminates.

Valid encoding options follow:
  • UTF-8 or UTF8
  • UTF-16BE, or UTF16-BE, or UTF16BE
  • UTF-16LE, or UTF16-LE, or UTF16LE
  • UTF-16 or UTF16
  • UTF-16BE instructs Teradata FastLoad to print the job output in the big endian UTF16 character set.
  • UTF-16LE instructs Teradata FastLoad to print the job output in the little endian UTF-16 character set.
  • On big endian client systems, UTF-16 instructs Teradata FastLoad to print the job output in big endian UTF-16 character set.
  • On the little endian client systems, UTF-16 instructs Teradata FastLoad to print the job out in little endian UTF-16 character set.

When the parameter is being used, it should be placed in front of the other runtime parameters to ensure the whole job output will be printed in the desired encoding form. If not placed ahead of the other runtime parameters when invoking the job, a warning message will be printed.

When the parameter is not specified and the client character set being used is UTF-16, the job output will be printed as UTF-16.

Do not use Notepad to view Unicode characters and MBCS. Word provides the option to select the encoding when opening the file, and always displays the MBCSs correctly with the proper encoding. Other Hexadecimal editors can also be used to view Unicode characters and MBCS properly.
-e filename Alternate file specification for Teradata FastLoad error messages.

Specifying an alternate file name produces a duplicate record of all Teradata FastLoad error messages.

On z/OS mainframe-attached systems, the alternate file specification is limited to eight characters, and it must be to a DD name defined in the JCL.

There is no default filename specification.

When valid -u parameter is specified the contents of errorfile will be in the same output script encoding.

For example, if UTF16 is specified for -u parameter, the contents are in Default Platform Endianness. When Little Endian is specified on Windows with Little Endian BOM in the beginning, or Big Endian is specified on a SPARC machine running Oracle Solaris with Big Endian BOM in the beginning.

If UTF16-BE is specified for -u parameter, the contents are in Big Endian.

< infilename Name of the standard input file that contains the Teradata FastLoad commands and Teradata SQL statements on network-attached client systems.

The infilename specification redirects the standard input (stdin). If an infilename specification is not entered, the default is stdin.

On a UNIX OS, if your infilename contains parenthesis, commas, or equal signs, FastLoad will return an error of “File Not Found”. The infilename must be changed to remove these special characters. On Windows, these characters are legal, and therefore no changes are necessary.
On mainframe-attached client systems, the SYSIN control command must be used to specify the input file before the utility is invoked.
> outfilename Name of the standard output file for Teradata FastLoad messages on network-attached systems.

The outfilename specification redirects the standard output (stdout).

If an outfilename specification is not entered, the default is stdout.

If an outfilename specification is not used to redirect stdout, do not use the same outfilename as an output or echo destination in the ROUTE MESSAGES command. Doing so produces incomplete results because of the conflicting write operations to the same file.

On mainframe-attached client systems, the SYSPRINT control command must be used to specify the output file before invoking the utility.

Specification on mainframe-attached systems that the Teradata FastLoad job will use an INMOD routine written in the IBM C programming language. The Teradata FastLoad job will fail if this option is not specified when using a IBM C INMOD routine.

-M max-sessions Maximum number of Teradata FastLoad sessions logged on to the Teradata Database.

Maximum specification must be greater than zero and no more than the total number of AMPs on the system.

Default is one session for each AMP.

-N min-sessions Minimum number of Teradata FastLoad sessions required to run the job.

Minimum specification must be greater than zero and it must be less than the value given for MAXSESS.

Default is 1.

-r outputrate The rate for displaying progress messages to standard output for rows successfully loaded to the Teradata Database.

If not specified, FastLoad defaults to writing a message every 100000 rows. Standard output for the default looks similar to the following:

**** 22:00:06 Starting row 400000
**** 22:00:11 Starting row 500000
**** 22:00:15 starting row 600000

outputrate must be specified as an integer between 1 and 4294967295. Integers outside t-s range or float values are invalid. If an invalid value is specified, FastLoad displays a message stating that an invalid outputrate value has been, specified and the default value is used to process the Teradata FastLoad job.

-sminutes Specification of the sleep option in which minutes is the number of minutes that Teradata FastLoad pauses before retrying the logon operation.

For more information, see SLEEP.

The Teradata FastLoad default value is 6 minutes.

-thours Specification of the tenacity option in which hours is the number of hours that Teradata FastLoad continues trying to log on when the maximum number of load jobs are already running on the Teradata Database.

For more information, see TENACITY.

The Teradata FastLoad default is no tenacity. Either a Teradata FastLoad configuration file entry, the runtime parameter, or a TENACITY command in the Teradata FastLoad job script must be used to enable the tenacity feature for the Teradata FastLoad logon operation.

-v Allows printing of every request sent to the Teradata Database.
-y Specification for the data encryption option.

When specified at run time, all sessions will be encrypted.

-V Display version number and stop.

This option must be run alone. Running the -V option with other run time options will produce invalid results.

-w OutputWith FastLoad wraps long error message to cleanup the message.

“-w” allows a user to specify the output message width.

The output width can be set to any value from 62 to 256 bytes. If used, FastLoad wraps long error messages at the width specified, instead of the at 72 bytes if the option is not set for backward compatibility.

If an out of range value is set, FastLoad issues a warning message and continues to use default constant width for output messages.

The first occurrence of the runtime parameter is in effect if the duplicates are specified and the remaining will be omitted with a warning message “FDL2430 WARNING: Run time parameters detected and omitted.”