BigInt support for Teradata in DataStage 8

DS_FocusGroup · Post by **DS_FocusGroup** » Mon Aug 25, 2008 6:25 am

Hello everyone,

Has anyone experienced working with BigInt data type with Teradata through DataStage before? Prior to the latest release (v12), Teradata did not support BigInt, but it does now. Does DataStage 8 support BigInt for Teradata? Has anyone tried to load/unload a table with a BigInt column through any of the Teradata Stages in DataStage?

Thanks in advance!

toshea · Post by **toshea** » Tue Aug 26, 2008 12:27 pm

Teradata introduced BIGINT in V2R6.2. That data type is supported by the Teradata Connector in Information Server 8.0.1 FP 1.

shershahkhan · Post by **shershahkhan** » Wed Aug 27, 2008 9:12 am

Hi,
I try this out but when i try to view the data from view data option on the Teradata Connector stage it doesn't give any error but when i run the job it say BigInt is not suportted.

toshea · Post by **toshea** » Wed Aug 27, 2008 10:22 am

My mistake, support for BIGINT in the Teradata Connector isn't in the base 8.0.1 FP1, but it is available in a patch to FP1. Get the patch for Ecase 125205. There is an 8.0.1 FP1 patch for AIX. If you need a patch for a different platform, you'll need to contact your IBM support to have a patch built.

In addition to installing the patch, you should edit the clispb.dat file which is usually in /usr/lib or /opt/teradata/client/lib. You should add the following line if you want to support DECIMAL(38) which is another new data type that was introduced in V2R6.2 in addition to BIGINT:

max_decimal_returned=38

Without the patch, you should still be able to load into or export from BIGINT columns, but you'll need to set the DataStage column to VarChar(20). When loading, the Teradata server will do the conversion from VarChar to BIGINT. When exporting, you should use the CAST function to convert from BIGINT to VARCHAR, e.g. SELECT CAST(BigIntColumn AS VARCHAR(20)) FROM TableName.

shershahkhan · Post by **shershahkhan** » Thu Aug 28, 2008 1:43 pm

We have contacted IBM and the patch was for one particular customer and very specific to the envirnoment they have. We still not able to make it work IBM says they don't provide support for BigInt at the moment, they will pass our request to the engineerring dept.