Teradata Database for a UNIX system and Teradata for Windows allow establish a character set when invoking Teradata MultiLoad.
Character Sets Supported by Teradata MultiLoad
The following table lists the character sets supported by Teradata MultiLoad. Character sets containing “EBCDIC” as part of the name are for mainframe-attached clients; all others are for network-attached clients.
| Character Set Name | Description | Configuration |
|---|---|---|
| ASCII | Latin | Network-attached |
| EBCDIC | Latin | Mainframe-attached |
| HANGULEBCDIC933_1II | Korean | Mainframe-attached |
| HANGULKSC5601_2R4 | Korean | Network-attached |
| SCHEBCDIC935_2IJ | Simplified Chinese | Mainframe-attached |
| SCHGB2312_1T0 | Simplified Chinese | Network-attached |
| TCHBIG5_1R0 | Traditional Chinese | Network-attached |
| TCHEBCDIC937_31B | Traditional Chinese | Mainframe-attached |
| KATAKANAEBCDIC | Japanese | Mainframe-attached |
| KANJIEBCDIC5026_01 | Japanese | Mainframe-attached |
| KANJIEBCDIC5035_01 | Japanese | Mainframe-attached |
| KANJIEUC_0U | Japanese | Network-attached |
| KANJISJIS_0S | Japanese | Network-attached |
| UTF-8 or UTF8 | Unicode | Mainframe-attached Network-attached |
| UTF-16 or UTF16 | Unicode | Network-attached |
Methods for Specifying Character Sets
The following table describes five ways to specify the character set or accept a default specification.
| Method | Description |
|---|---|
| Configuration File Specification | One of the best ways to specify the character set is with the character set specification in the Teradata MultiLoad configuration file, as described earlier in this chapter: CHARSET=character-set-name This allows a standard default character set for several or all Teradata MultiLoad runs, without having to specify the character set explicitly for each run. |
| Run-time Parameter Specification | Another good way to specify the character set is with the character set run-time parameter when Teradata MultiLoad is invoked, as described in Run-time Parameters:
|
| Client System Specification | Another way is to specify the character set for the client system before invoking Teradata MultiLoad by configuring the:
The character-set-name specification used to invoke Teradata MultiLoad always takes precedence over the current client system specification.
|
| Teradata Database Default | If a character-set-name specification is not used when Teradata MultiLoad is invoked, and there is no character set specification for the client system, the utility uses the default specification in the Teradata Database system table DBC.Hosts. If relying on the DBC.Hosts table specification for the default character set, ensure that the initial logon is in the default character set:
|
| Teradata MultiLoad Utility Default | If there is no character set specification in DBC.Hosts, then Teradata MultiLoad defaults to:
|
When an AXSMOD is used, Teradata MultiLoad will pass the session character set as an attribute to the AXSMOD for its possible use (most AXSMODs will not make any use of this information). The attribute name will be CHARSET_NAME and the attribute value will be a variable length character string consisting of the character set name.
Rules for Using Chinese and Korean Character Sets
Follow these rules when using Chinese and Korean character sets on mainframe-attached and network-attached platforms.
- Object Names – Object names are limited to A-Z, a-z, 0-9, and special characters such as $ and _.
- Maximum String Length –Teradata Database requires two bytes to process each of the Chinese or Korean characters. This limits both request size and record size. For example, if a record consists of one string, the length of that string is limited to a maximum of 32,000 characters or 64,000 bytes.
For more information about Chinese or Korean character set restrictions for Teradata Database, see International Character Set Support (B035-1125).
For more information about alternate character sets, see SQL Data Definition Language (B035-1184).