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Actian Zen
Actian Zen is a zero-maintenance, embedded, high-performance Database Management System (DBMS) for Edge data management-whether in the Cloud, remote and branch offices or in mobile and IoT settings. Actian PSQL v13 and later is called Actian Zen. For information about Actian Zen, see the Actian Zen documentation available at docs.actian.com.
Prerequisites
Install Actian Zen. Go to esd.actian.com and download the required version of Actian Zen. For information about installing Actian Zen, see the ActianZen documentation available at docs.actian.com.
Connector-Specific Notes
To connect to a Zen database, specify the name of the server, your user ID and password (if required), and database name.
Note:  The database name must be specified as the data source.
You can write data to an existing Zen target either in Replace or Append mode. The Replace mode deletes and recreates the target file or table. The Append mode adds data to the existing file or tables.
You can use an EZscript to auto-generate a GUID for a variable declared as the unique identifier data type. See Generating a Random Unique Identifier.
The WhereStmt property allows you to filter table data and is supported with only the Table/View option.
To load Unicode data into Actian Zen database:
Make sure that the Codepage on the Zen server database is UTF-8.
Set the source connector Encoding property to UTF-8.
Set the target connector UseUnicodeDriver property to True.
Set the target connector Encoding property to UTF-8.
Make sure that the data type of Unicode target fields is set to NCHAR or NVARCHAR.
Connector Parts
Connector parts are the fields you configure to connect with a data source or target. The fields that are available depend on the connector you select.
For a list of all parts for source connectors, see Specifying Source Connector, Parts, and Properties.
For a list of all parts for target connectors, see Specifying Target Connector, Parts, and Properties.
Connector Properties
You can specify the following source (S) and target (T) properties:
Property
S/T
Description
Encoding
S/T
Type of encoding to use with source and target files. The default value is OEM.
WhereStmt
S
Provides a pass-through mechanism for SQL connectors where advanced users can construct the Where clause of the SQL query themselves. It can be used as an alternative to writing a lengthy query statement. You may use this to instruct the SQL database server to filter the data based on a particular condition before sending it to the integration platform. There is no default value for this property.
Note:  This property is not applicable when the source connection is a query statement or file. This property enables data filtering when you select a table.
SystemTables
S/T
If set to True, allows you to see all tables created by the DBA in the database. The system table names appear in the table list. The default value is False.
Note:  This property is applicable only if you have logged in to the database as the Database Administrator (DBA). Only the DBA has access to system tables.
Views
S/T
If set to True, this property allows you to see the view names in the table list along with the table names. Default is True.
Note:  This property supports only Append and DeleteAndAppend output modes and does not support the Replace output mode.
CursorType
S
Type of cursor to use for retrieving records from the source table. The options available are:
Dynamic
Static
Forward Only
The default value is Forward Only.
Note:  If you select Dynamic or Static, some times you may not be able to view the data in the Data Browser. To resolve this, append SELECTLOOPS=N for the DriverOptions property and refresh the connection.
IdentifierQuotes
S/T
Quoted identifiers are used to make the SQL statement parseable and distinguish between columns and character data in SQL statements. All databases have quoted identifiers.
In a SQL statement, you must enclose identifiers containing special characters or match keywords in identifier quote characters (also known as delimited identifiers in SQL-92). For example, the Accounts Receivable identifier is quoted in the following SELECT statement:
SELECT * FROM "Accounts Receivable"
If you do not use identifier quotes, the parser assumes there are two tables, Accounts and Receivable, and returns a syntax error that they are not separated by a comma.
If either of the following values contain a space, set the identifierQuotes property on the source and the target to ““ or Default:
the value of the source connector part Table/View field.
the value of a source column name (for example, Account Number).
Otherwise, if the IdentifierQuotes property is set to None, a SQL error is returned and the source table data is not displayed.
IdentifierQuotes has the following options:
Default
None
"
MaxDataLength
S/T
Maximum number of characters to write to a field. It is the maximum data length for long data types. The default value is 1 MB. You can change this value based on the available memory and target requirements.
When this connector requests the column field size for these data types, it checks for a returned value greater than the MaxDataLength value. If the value is greater, then the MaxDataLength value is used.
Some ODBC drivers have maximum data length limitations. If you choose an ODBC source or target connector and the default setting is not 1 MB, the integration platform sets the value for that particular ODBC driver. In this case, do not set the MaxDataLength property to a higher value.
TransactionIsolation
S/T
Allows you to specify an isolation level when reading from or writing to a database table with ODBC. The isolation levels are:
Read uncommitted – Permits P1, P2, and P3.
Read committed – Permits P2 and P3. Does not permit P1.
Repeatable read – Permits P3. Does not permit P1 and P2.
Serializable – Does not permit P1, P2 or P3.
The default is serializable.
The ANSI SQL 2 standard defines three specific ways in which serializability of a transaction may be violated: P1 (Dirty Read), P2 (Nonrepeatable Read), and P3 (Phantoms).
For further details about TransactionIsolation levels, see the IBM DB2 Universal Database ODBC documentation.
ConstraintDDL
T
Additional SQL data definition language statements that must be executed after the target table is created. This is similar to the support provided for SQL pass-through in the SQL import connectors. Each line must be a valid ODBC DDL statement.
For example, you can have the following statements:
CREATE UNIQUE INDEX index1 ON mytable (Field1 ASC)
CREATE INDEX index2 ON mytable (Field2, Field3)
These statements creates two indices on the table mytable. The first statement does not allow duplicates and the index values are stored in ascending order. The second index is a compound index on fields Field2 and Field3.
The ConstraintDDL is run only if the output mode is Replace for the target. If there are any errors, they are written to the error and event log file. An error during transformation displays the Transformation Error dialog. You can ignore the DDL errors and continue the transformation.
ConstraintDDL also supports an escaping mechanism that allows you to specify DDL in the native SQL of the DBMS. Any statement preceded by an @ sign is sent directly to DBMS.
The following is a DDL statement for creating a primary key for the table mytable:
@CREATE INDEX pk_mytable ON mytable (Field1, Field2) WITH PRIMARY
Some ODBC drivers do not support the SQL extensions required to create a primary key with the ODBC variant of the SQL CREATE statement. In these cases, to create primary keys, use native SQL.
CommitFrequency
T
Allows you to control how often data is committed to the database when the AutoCommit property is set to False.
The default value is zero that is, the data is committed at the end of the transformation, allowing rollback on error. This is the slowest setting. When performing large transformations, this is not practical as it may produce too many transaction log entries.
Specifying a nonzero value indicates that data is committed to the database after inserting or updating specified number of records.
AutoCommit
T
If set to True, it allows you to automatically commit changes as they are made by each SQL statement, instead of waiting until the end of the transaction.
Also, if this option is set to True, you cannot roll back changes after they are done. It will overwrite the CommitFrequency value, which means that the changes are committed by each SQL statement irrespective of the value set for CommitFrequency.
The default value is False.
BulkOperations
T
Determines if an insert statement is run for each record or a bulk add is executed for each record. The default is False, the slower setting. If you want to maximize speed and instruct the integration platform to use a bulk add, change this setting to True. Use bulk operations for faster insert.
PrimaryKey
T
List of field names that are used to create the primary key. Field names are delimited by commas.
If the PrimaryKey property contains one or more field names, these names are included in the SQL CREATE statement when the connector is in Replace mode.
To use the PrimaryKey property, the ODBC driver must support Integrity Enhancement Facility (IEF). Only advanced ODBC drivers support this.
UseCursors
T
If set to True and the specified ODBC driver does not support cursor inserts, the integration platform falls back on the SQL INSERT mode of adding records. The default value is False.
For exports, cursor support is meant to enhance the performance of inserting records. This is applicable for desktop databases.
For database servers, there is no noticeable change in insert speed. Another complication of cursor inserts is that some drivers require the target table be indexed, otherwise positioned updates (cursors) are not allowed. The PrimaryKey and ConstraintDDL properties in the ODBC export connector addresses this issue.
ArraySize
T
Determines the number of rows to be sent to the server at a time. The default value is 1000. Larger values will buffer multiple rows and send them all at once. While this improves the speed, it affects error reporting (a server error will not be detected or reported until the next batch of records is sent to the server).
The maximum value allowed for this property is 100000. While the connector allows a high value to be set, many drivers have lower limits. The connector will log a message indicating if the driver is forcing a lower value for the array size. In addition, the connector does not support arrays when there is a LOB-type field in the table, or when the (maximum) length of a character-type field is longer than 32767 characters. In these cases, a message will be logged indicating the array size has been reduced to 1.
Due to the way the connector attempts to support older drivers, the array support requires BulkOperations and UseCursors is set to True or both must be set to False. If BulkOperations is False and UseCursors is True, then the array size is ignored and a message is logged indicating this condition.
Use Unicode Driver
S/T
Specify whether a unicode driver must be used for connecting to Actian Zen. The options available are:
True
False
False is the default value.
StripLeadingBlanks
S/T
Strips out leading blanks in all data fields if set to true. Default is false.
Note:  This property is applied to the source connector only if Source Table/View is set to Table/View. It is not applied if Source Table/View is set to Query Statement or Query Files.
StripTrailingBlanks
S/T
Strips out trailing blanks in all data fields if set to true. Default is false.
Note:  This property is applied to the source connector only if Source Table/View is set to Table/View. It is not applied if Source Table/View is set to Query Statement or Query Files.
Supported Output Modes
Actian Zen connector supports the Replace, Append, and Delete and Append output modes. For more information, see Target Output Modes.
Supported Data Types
The following data types are supported:
AutoTimeStamp
BFloat4
BFloat8
BigIdentity
BigInt
Binary
Bit
Char
Currency
Date
DateTime
Decimal
Double
Float
Identity
Integer
LongVarBinary
LongVarChar
Money
NChar
NLongVarChar
Numeric
Numericsa
Numericslb
Numericsls
Numericstb
Numericsts
NVarChar
Real
SmallIdentity
SmallInt
Time
TimeStamp
TimeStamp2
TinyInt
UBigInt
UInteger
UniqueIdentifier
USmallInt
UTinyInt
VarChar
Last modified date: 10/22/2024