What is Teradata?

Teradata is a powerful relational database management system optimized for large-scale data warehousing and big data analytics. Known for its parallel processing capabilities, scalability, and advanced analytics features, it enables organizations to efficiently manage and analyze vast amounts of data. This makes it a preferred choice for enterprises seeking robust, high-performance solutions for data-driven decision-making.

Why Connect Teradata to Monte Carlo?

Integrating Monte Carlo with Teradata allows you to monitor your data and tables. Monte Carlo can detect anomalous freshness, volume and schema changes out of the box. With the ability to run SQL queries on your Teradata database, you can create advanced monitors to analyze the data in your tables and views. For a full list of supported monitor types see Monitor Support.

After connecting Teradata here is what you can expect to see out of the box:

Freshness:

Freshness monitors are active for Teradata tables out of the box. Monte Carlo's detection models will automatically train on the freshness metadata and alert on anomalies as they emerge.

Volume:

Our volume monitors are active out of the box. By collecting metadata on your tables, Monte Carlo's machine learning algorithm can set automatic thresholds to alert when a table has gone too long without a change in size or when an abnormal amount of bytes are added or deleted.

Monitor Support

Below are the supported monitors for the Teradata integration today. Please reach out to your Monte Carlo representative if you have requirements for additional Monitors.

Connecting to Teradata

Now that we know the value connecting Teradata to Monte Carlo can bring, here are the necessary steps to set up the integration.

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Prerequisites

To create a service account, you will need admin credentials to your Teradata database.

This guide explains how to create a read-only service account for Monte Carlo in Teradata.

To review all steps necessary to integrate a data warehouse with Monte Carlo, please see here.

Create a read-only service account

Please run the SQL snippet below on your Teradata database to create a read-only service account for Monte Carlo

CREATE USER montecarlo AS
PASSWORD = <password>
PERMANENT = 1000000 BYTES
TEMPORARY = 1000000 BYTES
SPOOL = 10000000 BYTES;

-- Grants SELECT access on required metadata tables:
GRANT SELECT ON DBC.DatabasesVX TO montecarlo;
GRANT SELECT ON DBC.TablesVX TO montecarlo;
GRANT SELECT ON DBC.TableSizeVX TO montecarlo;
GRANT SELECT ON DBC.ColumnsVX TO montecarlo;
GRANT SELECT ON DBC.QryLogV TO montecarlo;
GRANT SELECT ON DBC.QryLogSQLV TO montecarlo;

-- Grants SELECT on all tables contained in <DATABASE NAME>. 
-- Run this command for each Database that contains tables you 
-- would like to create custom monitors on
GRANT SELECT ON <DATABASE NAME> TO montecarlo;

FAQs

What hosting solutions are supported?
This integration supports any instance that is reachable from one of our hosting options. Please see the networking docs for more detail.

Can I use permissions on the Teradata user to control which tables Monte Carlo monitors?
Monte Carlo will query the view DBC.TablesVXwhen collecting metadata. This view will only return tables that the service account user owns or has been granted privileges on. If you do not want a table monitored by Monte Carlo, make sure the service account user has no privileges on that table. If you don't want an entire database (and its tables) monitored by Monte Carlo, remove all grants on that database to the service account user.

Alternatively you can use Monte Carlo's schema controls to control which catalogs and datasets are monitored.

How do I fix No more spool space in montecarlo. error?
Depending on the size of your tables, you might need to allocate more spool space to the service account that Monte Carlo is using. If you see this error when trying to add a Teradata connection (during the validation step) or during metadata collection, modify the user to allocate more spool space with this query:

MODIFY USER montecarlo AS
SPOOL = <new spool size> BYTES;