Consider a partial Data Vault copy between Data Vault systems if you retire multiple applications over time. For example, you plan to retire one application every month for the next two years. You archive data from one application to a Data Vault test system. After you archive and validate the data in the Data Vault test system, you want to copy the data to a Data Vault production system.

When you copy data between Data Vault systems, the data files retain the original compression. The data remains immutable. The data copy is directly from the source to the target. You do not need an intermediate staging area.

With ssadbcopy, you can also perform a partial Data Vault copy to copy data from a Data Vault instance with a local file system to a Data Vault instance that stores database files in an external storage system, for example Centera.

When you perform a partial Data Vault copy, you run the ssadbcopy command line utility in the source and target systems. You run the utility in the following modes:

Data export

When you export data from the source Data Vault system, you run the utility in data export mode. You specify the data that you want to copy. The utility creates data export files that contain DDL and administrator scripts. You transfer the data export files to the target system manually or automatically with an FTP server.

Data import

When you import data in the target system, you run the utility in data import mode. The utility runs the DDL and administrator scripts from the data export files. You specify how to insert the data. You can append the data, or you can drop and create the data.