Chapter 5 – Conclusion: The Five Brilliant Pieces of Teradata

“Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana.”
- Groucho Marx

Five Brilliant Pieces of Teradata (1 of 5) is MPP

“Be the change that you want to see in the world.”

- Mahatma Gandhi

The largest systems in the world have used Teradata for market dominance for the past 20 years. Its Massively Parallel Processing (MPP) technology analyzes so large that companies can run queries they have never been able to run before. Recognize that you now have something very powerful and that is the ability to analyze every aspect of your business. With AMPs doing the work, you can see the dollars in your business improve through massive analysis.

Five Brilliant Pieces (2 of 5) are Tactical Queries

"Time is the coin of your life. It is the only coin you have, and only you can determine how it will be spent. Be careful lest you let other people spend it for you."

- Carl Sandburg

Forget about the quote above and the magic of being needed by just one person. The real magic is that Teradata can find a single row in under a second using just one AMP! That is of major importance. Imagine a table with trillions of rows, and yet if the user searches on the Primary Index column, the query is lightning fast and sub second. Count on Teradata for analyzing mass amounts of data, but realize that Teradata can find individual rows in a moment’s notice with only a single AMP being contacted.

Five Brilliant Pieces (3 of 5) Is a Traffic System

"The man on top of the mountain did not fall there."

- Longfellow

Imagine our highways with only one lane or roads with no stop signs or lights. Teradata has the most sophisticated traffic system in the industry. Teradata allows for rules, times, delays, green lights to query and red lights to wait. Why put a long-haul trucker with an oversized load in the fast lane? Marathon runners don’t run at the same speed as sprinters so you need to give your fastest speeds to your tactical queries and slower speeds for your batch processing. Teradata Active System Management (TASM) controls the query traffic so users can take the route less traveled.

Five Brilliant Pieces (4 of 5) Is Viewpoint

“Cowards die many times before their deaths; the valiant never taste of death but once.”

- William Shakespeare

Teradata allows your queries to float like a butterfly and not sting at all! This is because Viewpoint gives the DBA and the users their own view of their Teradata world so everyone knows exactly what is going on with the system.

Five Brilliant Pieces (5 of 5) Are Data Processing Options

“I find that the harder I work, the more luck I seem to have.”

- Thomas Jefferson

The Teradata environment allows for everyone to walk in their own tracks because there are so many design options to suit each type of query. Large massive joins, sub second tactical queries, partitioned tables for range queries, columnar designs for specific columns combined with secondary indexes, join and hash indexes provide an environment where everyone can leave their footprint on the company by running that query which can make the company a million dollars.