Teradata Database Administration: The Fundamentals

This is the first of a series of 3 DBA books. The most important aspect of being a DBA is understanding the landscape as well as having strong fundamentals so you can do your job. That is what this book lays out. You’ll understand how Teradata works, you’ll understand the environment and the data base. You’ll understand your roles and profiles. You are set to be an excellent DBA by reading this book.

About the Authors

Tom Coffing, better known as Tera-Tom, is the founder of Coffing Data Warehousing where he has been CEO for the past 20 years. Tom has written over 50 books on all aspects of Teradata, Netezza, Kognitio, Redshift, ParAccel, Vertica, SQL Server, and Greenplum. Tom has taught over 1,000 Teradata classes in places such as India, Africa, Europe, China, Malaysia, and throughout North America.

Tom is also the owner and designer of the Nexus Query Chameleon, the most sophisticated enterprise query tool in the industry. The Nexus works on all platforms, including Hadoop, converts table structures between all systems, and allows companies to load their ERwin logical model inside Nexus. The Nexus guides users like a GPS system. Users point and click on any table or view from any system, and they are guided to what joins to what. As users choose the columns they want on their report, the SQL is built automatically.

In High School, Tom was the first athlete from his school to ever place at state. He was selected by his school to represent them at Buckeye Boys State, and Tom was inducted into the first class of the Lakota High School Hall of Fame.

At the University of Arizona and University of Nevada Las Vegas, Tom was a two-time All-American wrestler, Sophomore Athlete of the year, and a two-time winner of the 1980 Olympic wrestling trials. Tom graduated with a Bachelor's degree in Speech Communications.

After college, Tom became a state and national champion speech winner for Toastmasters and won two orchid awards as an actor. Tom is the proud father of three wonderful children and has been married for the past 32 years.

Thomas Coffing III is a Teradata Certified Master who has written several books on all aspects of Teradata. He is a world-renowned professional database administrator and application developer, and has been working in the data warehousing industry since 2001. His expertise also includes Oracle, Netezza, SQL Server, Neoview, DATAllegro, and DB2 systems.

Thomas has been a key developer of the Nexus Query Chameleon, considered by many to be the best query tool in the market today.

Thomas has worked for more than 50 fortune 500 companies in regards to EDW training and application development, and has trained some of the brightest database administrators in the industry. His previous clients include General Electric, Charles Schwab, Liberty Mutual, Meijer, Caterpillar, American Airlines, and JP Morgan Chase. Thomas also headlined the 2007 Neoview conference for HP in Phuket, Thailand.