Why copy and entire table when a smaller and more manageable subset will get the job done? Depending on the stage of testing, a full copy of a table may not be necessary. If a particular test scenario only requires customers from a certain zip code area, why copy an entire table with thousands or millions of unwanted rows?

As tables grow in size, there will not always be enough free space to hold multiple copies of all testing data.Therefore, at times it may be preferable to specify criteria for copying or skipping rows from large tables prior to executing the actual copying or replication.

The data reduction component of BCV5 allows you to copy only a subset of data for selected DB2 tables, but in a fast and efficient way. You specify a set of rules that are similar to a DB2 WHERE clause and the integrated copy facility of BCV5 automatically removes the rows which do not match during the copy process. The complete reduction process is performed during the copy process. No temporary datasets and no additional free space on DASD is required.