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Status Future consideration
Workspace IBM i
Categories Db2 for i
Created by Guest
Created on Dec 5, 2023

RELATED IDEAS

Add parameter to RSTLIB / RSTOBJ commands to restore table(s) without data

Please consider adding a parameter to the RSTLIB and RSTOBJ commands to allow restore of DB2 tables / PF's without data (rows).

It would be great to be able to restore libraries or objects without getting the data onto the system.


Use case 1:

We have some tables containing billions of rows and occupying TB of storage. When we refresh our dev and QA environments, we restore a backup of our production environment - including these huge tables, which often are not relevant. For some of the tables we only need the DB2 structures, but as it is now we have to restore everything, all the TB's, and then delete all the rows after restore.

This is time- and storage consuming and could be avoided if a parameter was available to specify to NOT restore the data.


Use case 2:

The ability to restore without data could also be useful when restoring a library to a smaller system, that does not have the capacity for the full library.

The operator could specify some (archive) tables to not be restored with data, only their structure, and thus still be able to restore all the objects in the library.


Use case 3:

If there was the same parameter on the SAVLIB and SAVOBJ commands, this ability could also be used to duplicate a DB2 schema to another schema - by saving the library / objects without data and restore them into a new library. Avoiding saving and restoring the data in the tables would drastically reduce the time and storage needed for this operation.


From my experience the save and restore of tables are already split into data structure and data content. Especially when restoring it is easy to see how the tables are created first and then populated with data. So it should not be too difficult to program this into the save / restore functions.


I know and use the SQL generate objects procedure to get the DDL statements for a schema, but this does not help in the above situations, at least not in use case 1 and 2, and also not when you only have a tape available and need to get the objects from that tape onto your system.

Idea priority High
  • Guest
    Reply
    |     Mar 19, 2024

    As for structure, there are a couple alternatives –

    1. For all 3 cases - SAVLIB & SAVOBJ both have the SAVFDTA parameter that is set to *YES by default – set it to *NO and all you have is structure.

    2. Also all 3 cases, perhaps - use one of the ACS tools to Generate SQL – do this over a library to get CREATE xxx statements – this’d be another way to replicate structure

      1. This has side effects you might not want to deal with, as it's more a part of converting from DDS to DDL

    1 reply
  • Guest
    Reply
    |     Mar 19, 2024

    This is a great idea, not sure why it would not be considered.

  • Guest
    Reply
    |     Jan 30, 2024

    "There are too many available works around"

    Could you please point out some of them?

  • Admin
    Carmelita Ruvalcaba Cevallos
    Reply
    |     Jan 30, 2024

    The CAAC has reviewed this IBM Idea and recommends that IBM not implement this request.

    There are too many available works around and this also required induvial customization and does not lend itself impacting into the save/restore process.

    Background: The COMMON Americas Advisory Council (CAAC) members have a broad range of experience in working with small and medium-sized IBM i customers. CAAC has a key role in working with IBM i development to help assess the value and impact of individual IBM Ideas on the broader IBM i community and has therefore reviewed your Idea.

    For more information about CAAC, see www.common.org/caac

    Carmelita Ruvalcaba - CAAC Program Manager

    1 reply
  • Guest
    Reply
    |     Dec 14, 2023
    IBM will use this Idea as input to planning, but no commitment is made or implied. This Idea will be updated in the future if IBM implements it.

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