In many cases, large tables in Oracle databases use the partitioning option to divide the data in to segments based on a lookup key. This greatly increases the speed of access to the data as queries can be parallelized. Additional access speed improvements can be made if operations are performed within a partition since the remainder of the data rows need not be considered.

Note: The Data Masker software also contains a Range Splitter rule which can split a rule into multiple parallel rules based on the information in a range column.

Data Masker Substitution or Row-Internal rules have no knowledge of a tables partitioning structure and operate on the table as if it were not partitioned. This means that, even though the Data Masker software itself is multi-threaded, any one Substitution or Row-Internal rule cannot operate in parallel on a table. Split Partition Manager rules are designed to address this issue. This type of rule uses a template Substitution or Row-Internal rule and auto-generates a list of Substitution or Row-Internal rules each of which operates on a specific partition in a table. These auto-generated rules operate in parallel and, hence, dramatically reduce the total time taken to mask the data in a partitioned table.

Important Note: The rules which operate on the table partitions are always auto-generated each time the rule is run. This is done to ensure that every partition receives masking the appropriate masking operations - even if the partition was added after the rule was created.

A Split Partition Manager is simple to create. Any Substitution or Row-Internal rule can be converted into a Split Partition Manager rule by pressing the Convert to Split Partition Rule button on the Change Managers tab of that rules Create/Edit form.

The creation of a Split Partition Manager rule is performed as follows.

1. Create a Substitution or Row-Internal Synchronization rule on the table and column(s) which you wish to mask. Use the Convert to Split Partition Manager Rule button on the Change Managers Tab of those rules to convert the existing rule into a Split Partition Manager rule.

The location of the Change Managers tab on a Substitution rule

Once converted, the new Split Partition Manager rule will be visible in the rule display with the same rule number and rule block.

The Substitution rule has changed to a Split Partition Manager rule

2. The new Split Partition Manager rule can be opened and the Edit Split Partition Manager rule form will be visible.

The Edit Split Partition Manager rule form

3. At this point rules for each partition in the target table will be visible within the Split Partition Manager rule. Execution statistics (runtime, rows masked) for each partition rule can be viewed on the Rule Statistics tab.

The Split Partition Manager rule can be enabled, disabled or run manually like any other rule. The rules it contains will execute in parallel according to the rule block of the parent. The Edit Split Partition Manager rule form has more details on the configuration of Split Partition manager rules.