Alias in Teradata

The meaning of an alias is to give a nickname to something. In Teradata also, we can give an alias to any column. Sometimes, the column’s name looks strange and not reader-friendly. In order to make it reader-friendly, we can make use of Teradata Alias.

Apart from the result set, an alias makes the SQL easier to write. The new alias name can be used anywhere in the SQL statement. We can give alias names to any other objects like tables and views to make it easier to write join queries.

Alias in Teradata syntax

select column1 alias1, column2 alias2,...,columnN aliasN
from DatabaseName.TableName;

OR

select column1 as alias1, column2 as alias2,...,columnN as aliasN
from DatabaseName.TableName;

Alias in Teradata example

The following example shows how to use the alias for columns in Teradata.

SELECT EMPNO EMPID, FIRST_NAME "FIRST NAME", LAST_NAME "LAST NAME"
FROM TUTORIALSBOOK.Employee
ORDER BY 1;

Output:

SELECT EMPNO EMPID, FIRST_NAME "FIRST NAME", LAST_NAME "LAST NAME"
FROM TUTORIALSBOOK.Employee
ORDER BY 1;

 *** Query completed. 8 rows found. 3 columns returned.
 *** Total elapsed time was 1 second.

      EMPID  FIRST NAME                 LAST NAME
-----------  -------------------------  -------------------------
       1001  STEFAN                     SALVATORE
       1002  DIANA                      LORANCE
       1003  JAMES                      MADISON
       1004  JONES                      NICK
       1005  LUCY                       GILLER
       1006  ISSAC                      STEFAN
       1007  NANCY                      GILBERT
       1008  JOHN                       SMITH