Usage Notes
Use of UNICODE Affects Column Width Requirements
When specifying a UTF-8 character set in a Teradata PT script the output schema definition must define column widths three times larger.
When using the UTF-16 character set in a Teradata PT job script, the output SCHEMA definition must define column widths two times larger. The width values must be an even and positive number.
Using Default Lengths
Many data types are associated with length specifications lengthBytes or lengthDigits, which may be either optional or required, depending on the data type. Most of these allow for deferral to the default length value, by simply not specifying the length. However, since the default length is often the maximum length, use of the default value could cause a minor degradation in performance. Be sure to specify length values rather than deferring to the default values when maximizing performance is important.
Specifying ANSI/SQL INTERVAL, TIME, and TIMESTAMP Datatypes
In prior releases, Teradata PT required users to define columns of these types as CHAR columns of the appropriate lengths in Teradata PT schemas, for example, CHAR(8) for a DBS TIME(0) column.
Starting with Teradata PT Release 12.0, these columns can be defined with their DBS data type identifiers directly in DEFINE SCHEMA statements.
Specifying ARRAY Data Types
A column that is defined as an ARRAY data type in a Teradata table must be specified as a VARCHAR data type in the DEFINE SCHEMA statement.
The external representation for an ARRAY data type is VARCHAR.
For more information see, Teradata Parallel Transporter User Guide.