Redshift InDB Table Creation

[sehling]

Using the Write feature of the Redshift ODBC tool, you are now able to import and manipulate data easily into a database with Alteryx 10. 

My question is this:  Is there a way to specify the table definitions (Field Names, Field Lengths, Field Types, Sort/Distro Keys, etc) on the import when the new table gets created through Alteryx?

We currently use a custom C# upload tool to do our imports and then spin the data using Alteryx, but it's an added manual step using this method.  Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Scott

[michael_treadwell · Accepted solution]

Unfortunately there is no simple way to accomplish this with the basic In-DB tool functionality. If I were tasked with this I would probably create the table externally before running Alteryx, similar to what you are doing with the C# tool.

As you probably already know, Redshift has a CREATE LIKE functionality. It would be nice to see a future iteration of the write tool take advantage of this capability.

If you really wanted to keep everything inside Alteryx, you could stream the data out then use a Pre Create SQL Statement but that sort of defeats the prupose of using In-DB tools in the first place.

[sehling]

Michael,

Thanks for the quick reply.  I didn't think it was possible, but wanted to explore all avenues. 

This is definitely functionality Alteryx should consider putting into place with a future release.  Without it, in most cases it deems the Write functionality to Redshift useless when creating a table.

Scott