Test Data Management

The Optim™ test data management capabilities provide an efficient alternative to database cloning, allowing you to create development and testing environments that are sized appropriately.

For information about the test data management functions of Optim, see the Move User Manual, the Compare User Manual, and this user manual.

Access is an online productivity tool for browsing and editing related data residing in multiple IBM^® DB2^® tables. This interactive utility is useful for programmers, database administrators, DB2 support technicians, or anyone needing a global view of data in a DB2 database.

A major reason that companies invest in relational technology is to have greater flexibility in accessing corporate information. In DB2, information is normalized into simple elements and stored in multiple tables. Application programs access the related tables to “re-assemble” the information. However, faster, more flexible, and dynamic access to the data is needed at many times during the development, testing, and maintenance of applications.

Access provides this access to related data in multiple DB2 tables and simplifies many daily maintenance tasks, such as:

• Editing test data to incorporate special test cases and erroneous data in order to verify all logic paths in an application.
• Browsing one or more tables to ensure that data is as expected. This includes inspecting specific rows or columns that may be causing problems.
• Correcting data problems.
• Verifying SQL statements embedded in programs.

A programmer or database administrator can easily inspect and edit sets of related data at one time on one screen. Access eliminates the time-consuming efforts of manually “assembling” data from different tables.