Amazon Redshift announces Enhancements to Data Loading, Security, and SAS Integration
BACKUP NO option when creating tables: You can now use the BACKUP NO option with the CREATE TABLE command, and improve data loading and cluster performance. For tables, such as staging tables, which contain only transient and pre-processed data, specify BACKUP NO to save processing time when creating snapshots and restoring from snapshots. This option also reduces storage space used by snapshots.
MD5 hash password parameters: You can now convert user name and password parameters into an MD5 hash string and provide the hash string as argument to CREATE USER and ALTER USER commands. This is a more secure alternative to passing passwords in clear text, and is available in version 1.0.1046 and above.
New view to monitor performance: You can now use the SVV_TRANSACTIONS view to identify open transactions and lock contention issues.
SAS Integration enhancements: SAS/ACCESS Interface to Amazon Redshift, an integration which allows you to access your Amazon Redshift data from SAS, has added several improvements including implicit conversion of SAS queries into Amazon Redshift SQL queries to minimize the amount of data transferred to SAS; push down of more SAS functions to the database; extended data types; and better performance of data insert operations. For more information, go to the SAS/ACCESS website.