The following describes the command conventions to observe in Teradata MultiLoad job scripts.
Conditional Expressions
Conditional expressions return a value of:
- 0 if the condition evaluates to FALSE
or
- 1 if the condition evaluates to TRUE
With the following exceptions, Teradata MultiLoad handles conditional expressions as described in the Teradata SQL reference documentation:
- The field names of records from an external data source or a Teradata MultiLoad utility variable are equivalent to column names in Teradata SQL conditional expressions.
- The LIKE operator is not supported in logical expressions that make up a conditional expression. (The NOT IN operator is supported.)
- The following elements are not supported in arithmetic expressions that make up logical expressions:
- The exponential operator
- Aggregate operators
- Arithmetic functions
Operators
Do not use words that are logical operators as keywords, such as:
- AND
- BETWEEN
- EQ
- GE
- GT
- IN
- IS
- LE
- LIKE
- LT
- MOD
- NE
- NOT
- NULL
- OR
Record Mode Load Anomaly
When loading data in Record Mode into a NULLABLE DATE field, if the source data is a binary integer of value zero, then Teradata Database sets the field to NULL, not to zero.
Reserved Words
Commands that are supported by Teradata MultiLoad do not use reserved words, except:
- Those that are operators
- Where a specific expression is allowed
Though there is no specific restriction against doing so, avoid using the following as variable names:
- Teradata MultiLoad command keywords
- Teradata SQL reserved words
Table Column Names
The column names of the table specified by Teradata MultiLoad TABLE command must be standard Teradata SQL column names that are not enclosed in quotation marks.
Invalid column names produce errors:
- Embedded blanks cause a syntax error
- Invalid characters cause an invalid name error
- Reserved words cause a syntax error that identifies the reserved word