The Substitution Rule dialog box exists to construct new Substitution rules. Substitution rules are designed to replace data in a table column with realistic looking but random non-meaningful data. The choice of the replacement data is configurable by associating a Data Set with the rule. A variety of Data Sets are available to provide a wide range of realistic looking data.

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

The Data Masker New Substitution Rule Dialog Box

Substitution rules do use options. Options are associated with the rule when it is created and can be adjusted at any time using the Options panel on the Set Rules tab.

The available options for Substitution rules are discussed in detail in the following help files.

Data Set Options

Choose the replacement data from amongst a wide selection of pre-packaged values.

WHERE Clause Options

Choose which rows in the target table and column will be substituted using a standard SQL WHERE clause.

UserDef Proc Options

Call a User Defined (and written) Procedure with the substitution data instead of the standard internally generated Data Masker Procedure.

How to Create a New Substitution Rule

The panel on the top 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 Substitution Rule dialog box, select the table which contains the column on which you wish to perform the substitution 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 substituted 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. Substitution rules on columns used in a Unique or Primary Key or in a Foreign Key will require that the constraint to be dropped before the Substitution rule can be executed.

Rule options can be configured using the panel on the bottom left hand side of the dialog box. Detailed information on these options can be found on the About Substitution Rules and the About Rule Options help pages.

To save the Substitution rule click on the Save Substitution 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 Substitution Rule dialog box.