Prism

Addressing the needs of Teradata application software developers and support staff in the Teradata marketplace, Prism™ from Ward Analytics has been designed to allow very rapid analysis of a Teradata Explain. Additionally, Prism analyses the Query itself and gives the user immediate information regarding any perceived problems or weaknesses in the SQL statement itself, with a natural language description of the issues identified and suggested resolution actions.

Using input methods such as “cut and paste” from external sources or directly hyperlinked in from another application, the Prism user can import SQL to be Explained. Once imported (or selected from the existing history of previously explained SQL requests), the SQL request is passed to the Teradata system for “Explaining”, and the returned is inserted into a grid designed for easy analysis.

The grid uses a Step by Step approach, so that all elements of each Step are placed into the corresponding column of the grid, allowing successive Steps to be immediately compared for Estimated Time, Elapsed Time, Percentage of Total Time, Estimated Row Counts, Join Type, Table and Spool Distribution-Confidence and Name, AMPs Used and Step Type etc. The grid can be sorted by any column/step parameter.

For further analysis of the SQL request of interest, the user simply selects “Analyse Using Current Options” from the “Analysis” drop down menu on the main toolbar. Further choices regarding analysis allow the user to choose which aspects of the SQL request are to be analysed – such as  Cartesian Product Joins, High/Low Confidence for Join and Tables, Confidence for Index Join, Missing Statistics etc. Issues found are listed with one of 4 steps of severity.

Having found any issues in the SQL and then listed them, Prism will then suggest corrective measures to deal with the identified problems. Visual tracking of which Steps a Spool file is used in,and crucially where they were created is provided, allowing rapid analysis of likely related problems. Facilities such as “show table definition”, “open collects statistics wizard” etc are all available from shift-right-click drop down menus.