Data Masker provides a variety of tools and reporting utilities to help with common tasks. These utilities are located under the Reports and Tools menus in the menu bar.

Tools

Column finder

A handy utility to browse the database table structure and find columns based on user specified search criteria (including wild cards and full regex). This tool is useful when analyzing a database in order to find tables and columns which might require masking.

Schema comparator

The Schema Comparison tool is designed to compare the schema structure stored in the Rule Controller with the real structure in the schema to which the Rule Controller connects. The output of the tool is a very readable report which details the changes. More information on this topic can be found on the Schema Comparison tool help page.

Data viewer

The Data Viewer tool displays the data in a table or shows the values returned by a user specified query. Besides quickly showing the data present in the table the Data Viewer tool also has the ability to find all columns which are empty (containing all nulls or blank values) and can display a list of all distinct values in a column (or columns) in the table.

Check for unindexed rule targets

The execution speed of Table-to-Table Rules will drop drastically if the join columns are not indexed. This tool provides a quick way to list the rules targeting unindexed columns and genreate SQL scripts for creating and dropping indexes on the target columns.

Check for rules with missing tables

This tool provides a quick way to list the rules with targeting tables not in the saved schema, due to being excluded, removed or a schema refresh.

Test all rule controllers

Tests if all rule controllers can be connected succesfully and if statistics tables exist in the database.

Show notes splash screen

Displays the notes saved for the current masking set. The notes can be edited by Edit Masking Set Notes... on the Misc. Setup tab.

Reset all passwords

Change the passwords saved in all rule controllers.

View log file now

Each time the Data Masker software starts it creates a new log file in which it records its actions. This button will open the current log file in a text editor.

Create new log file

Forces the Data Masker software to create a new log file and all actions of the Data Masker software will subsequently be recorded in that log file. Note that the previous log file is not overwritten or deleted when a new log file is created, the log files are timestamped and will remain in the log directory until manually removed. There is also an option on the Misc. Setup tab which can enable the creation of a new log file for each masking set run.

Reports

Rule structure report

Generate rule structure report, which is a printable version of the current masking set.

Rule statistics report

Generate rule statistics report. The information in the report corresponds to the information saved in the rule statistics table.

Table statistics report

Generate table statistics report. The information in the report corresponds to the information saved in the table statistics table.