Bteq vs FastExport and Multiload

BTEQ vs. FastExport and MultiLoad

BTEQ is similar to Teradata FastExport and Teradata MultiLoad in exporting and importing. Yet, BTEQ is not a utility designed for bulk data movement.

Firstly, Teradata export and load utilities are fully parallel. Therefore, in bulk exporting and loading scenarios, Teradata FastExport and MultiLoad are better performers than BTEQ because they are optimized to apply multiple rows in block-level operations. BTEQ can import and export small volumes of data to and from the Teradata Database. In this aspect, indeed, it is more efficient than Teradata SQL Assistant. However, for tables that have more than a few thousand rows (It depends), FastExport and MultiLoad are recommended for better efficiency. No wonder, "BTEQ on Unix/MVS (dunno about Windoze) is typically faster than FastExport until volumes get well into the millions, if not tens of millions, of rows."³

Secondly, FastExport and MultiLoad have full restart capability. This feature means that if a FastExport or MultiLoad job should be interrupted for some reason, it can be restarted again from the last checkpoint, without having to start the job from the beginning. BTEQ does not support such features.

Thirdly, MultiLoad can load multiple input files concurrently and work on up to five tables at a time, using multiple sessions. MultiLoad places a lock on on the destination table(s) to prevent user queries from getting inconsistent results before the data load or update is complete.

In conclusion, for complex bulk-mode routines, FastExport and MultiLoad are preferred utilities; otherwise, BTEQ is a suitable choice.