Data Definition Language (DDL) is a subset of SQL. It is
a language for describing data and its relationships in a database.
You can generate DDL in a script for database objects to:
- Keep a snapshot of the database structure
- Set up a test system where the database acts like the production
system but contains no data
- Produce templates for new objects that you can create based on
existing ones. For example, generate the DDL for the Customer table,
then edit the DDL to create the table Customer_New with the same schema.
When you generate DDL, you can use the DDL statements to recreate
everything about a database except for its contents. You can generate
the DDL to completely recreate the database, or choose to recreate
only certain aspects of it, such as its current statistics. You can
also limit the statements that are generated so that only a segment
of the database is recreated, for example, the statistics for a subset
of tables.