The following examples illustrate common scenarios for selecting and excluding tables by using patterns and application models.

You want to select three specific tables in a single schema and copy them into another database. To do so you should specify three selection rules with each one selecting one of the three tables. For every of these rules, enter the respective schema name in the field Schema pattern, and the table name in the field Name pattern.

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You want to copy a whole schema to another database, for example, to copy a specific schema from a production database to a testing database. In this case you should add a selection rule with the schema name in the field Schema pattern. In the field Name pattern, enter a single percent sign (%) as a wildcard. This matches every table name in the specified schema.

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You want to copy some tables that are located in a given schema and all the table names differ only in one letter. For example, you want to copy the tables BEAR and BEER, but not the table BEEF. In this case, you should enter the schema name in the field Schema pattern. In the field Name pattern, specify a single underscore at the position, where the names differ. In our example, the expression is BE_R. The underscore acts as a wild card and causes the selection rule to match all tables beginning with BE, followed by exactly one arbitrary letter, and then the letter R. The two tables BEAR and BEER will be copied, but not the table BEEF. To copy all three tables, you could use the expressions BE__ or BE%.

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You want to compare objects between two environments. More precisely, a whole schema should be selected, but there are several tables that should not be part of the comparison. To achieve this, you would add a selection rule and specify the table schema in the field Schema pattern. In the field Name pattern, enter a single percent sign (%), as seen in Example 2. The percent sign acts as a wild card and results in the selection of all tables in that schema. To exclude a specific table you do not want to be compared in this structure comparison, add an exclude rule and specify Schema pattern as in the selection rule and enter the name of the table to be excluded in Name pattern. The image below shows an exclude rule that excludes the table CONSTANT_TABLE from the selection set.

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You have defined an Application Model in XDM and want to copy all the objects that are accessed in this application model within an XDM Table Copy Task (applies for both native and compatibility table copy tasks). You are able to use such an application model by defining a selection rule with its Selection Type Application Model instead of Pattern. You can now select one of your application models and its version. The selection set will then consist of every object, that is accessed in the application model.

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A more precise example with the use of an application model in a selection rule: You have specified an application model, but you only want to select and copy a specific subset of the objects accessed in this application model. In this case you can at first define a selection rule as shown in the example above. Subsequently, you would define an inverted exclude rule to specify the objects that should be part of the selection set. Such an inverted exclude rule specifies that the objects which do not match the exclude rule should be excluded from the selection set. An example could be that you only wish to use those objects accessed in the application model which belong to a specific schema and exclude all objects not belonging to this schema. To achieve this, you would define an inverted exclude rule with the required schema in the Schema pattern and the wildcard % as Name pattern.

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Combinations of the above scenarios are, of course, possible.

Technically, it is possible to define a scope for exclude rules in a table copy task. However, this is not practical, since both native and compatibility table copy tasks ignore exclude rules with scope Target. For this reason scope Source is selected by default. The main purpose of a table copy task is copying data, so it makes no sense to exclude anything after the data has already been selected.

A structure compare task, on the other hand, compares structures without copying anything, in which case it can be useful to exclude items from the report after the comparison.

This is especially relevant for exclude rules on columns: here, both Source and Target scope can be used in a meaningful way. Column exclude rules do not change the selection set of objects for the task, but they do control whether data (or structure) of specific columns is processed on source or target side. Using the scope on column-level exclude rules is therefore a practical application of the scope setting.

An example of when to use an exclude rule with scope Target is shown in the chapter describing object selection in structure compare tasks.

Additionally exclude rules can be defined for different scopes, specifically the scopes Source and Target. This will affect the object(s) that should be excluded.

Specifying an exclude rule with scope Target is only useful for the XDM task types structure compare task and structure compare from icebox task. That is because for a structure comparison there may be objects like for example grants that differ between source and target.

A scenario might be that objects should be compared between a production environment (defined as source) and a testing environment (target). Then of course there may be differences in grants between these two environments, which are known even before the comparison. Such accepted differences should not be part of the comparison. To exclude these objects in the target, an exclude rule can be defined with scope Target to avoid a comparison.

In contrast to structure comparison, an exclude rule with scope Target could also be defined in an XDM table copy task. However, this is not very useful as the main purpose of a table copy task is to actually copy data while a structure compare task should only compare structures.

To select a specific scope when creating an XDM exclude rule, select scope Source to apply the exclude rule to source objects or scope Target to apply the exclude rule to target objects.