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The Data Masker
New Shuffle Rule Dialog Box

The Shuffle Rule dialog box exists to construct new Shuffle rules. Shuffle rules are designed to randomly re-distribute the data in a table column. This effect is similar to the shuffling of a deck of cards (hence the name Shuffle Rule). Each Shuffle Rule affects only a specified column in a specified table. All other columns in the table remain unaffected.

General information on Masking Rules can be found in the About Data Masker Rules help file. Specific information on Shuffle rules (what they are, how and when they can be used) can be found in the About Shuffle Rules help file.

Shuffle rules do not use any options. They affect all columns in every row in the specified table. Shuffle rules cannot be used against tables containing a single row (the shuffle will be meaningless) and really should not be used in tables with a small number of rows. If there are too few rows the shuffle process will still work but the small number of rows makes it easier to manually "guess" which column data was originally associated with each row.


The Data Masker New Shuffle Rule Dialog Box

How to Create a New Shuffle Rule

The panel on the left hand side of the dialog box lists all of the tables in the schemas that the Data Masker application currently knows about. If the required table is not present in the list then the schema information will probably need to be refreshed again. Use the "Refresh Schema Information from DB" button on the Misc Setup tab to reload this information.

Note:A right mouse button click on any table name will cause a small menu to appear offering the option to see the columns, foreign keys and indexes for a particular table.

To use the New Shuffle Rule dialog box, select the table which contains the column on which you wish to perform the shuffle operation. Once a table has been selected, the columns for that table will appear in the top right hand Table Columns list view. Choose the column to be shuffled and the information will be summarized (as shown in the image above) in the bottom right hand panel area.

Beside the Column Name field is an icon containing a large letter I. A green icon indicates that the column present is used in an index, a red icon indicates that the column is not used in an index. Shuffle rules on columns used in a Unique or Primary Key index will require that index to be dropped before the Shuffle rule can be executed.

To save the Shuffle rule click on the Save Shuffle Rule button with the mouse.

At this point the construction of the rule is complete. A new rule can be added by selecting a new table (or column). Pressing the Done button will close the New Shuffle Rule dialog box.


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