WHAT IS DATA COMPOSER™? Top A test data generator. It generates realistic looking data with correct referential integrity.   IS DATA COMPOSER™ EASY TO USE? Top Very. For the basic creation of test data, almost no typing is required. The table definitions are read in by Data Composer™. You only have to select a table and click on a button, and an Insert SQL statement is generated.   HOW CAN AUTOMATICALLY GENERATED TEST DATA LOOK REALISTIC? Top Any column value can be overidden by the user. Generic value files can be used to pick a random realistic value for each row of data generated. For example, a ‘Customer Name’ column could pick a random name from the following list; Smith, Johnston, Turner, Samuels, McDonald.   WHAT ABOUT PERMITTED VALUES? Top If permitted values are used, Data Composer™ will either pick a permitted value at random, or you can set DC to always use a specific permitted value.   HOW CAN AUTOMATICALLY GENERATED TEST DATA HAVE CORRECT REFERENTIAL INTEGRITY? Top Data Composer™ knows if a column is a foreign key, and it knows which table and column it is a foreign key for. Using this information, it is very easy for the user to generate test data for parent and children entities. For example, minimal effort is required to create a Customer with 500 Orders, each with 100 Order Lines, and each Order Line related to a Product.   WHICH DATABASES DOES THE GENERATED SQL RUN ON? Top Data Composer™ currently generates standard ANSI SQL statements for the following databases: DB2 DB2/2 MS/SQL Server Oracle Sybase UDB Further databases can be added, depending on customer requirements. CANAM would like to take this opportunity to thank the current customers for their help in supplying technical information to enable us to support the above databases.   IS DATA COMPOSER™ PART OF ADVANTAGE GEN? Top No, Data Composer™ is not actually part of the Advantage Gen software from Sterling Software. It has been built by CANAM to work in conjunction with Composer or Advantage Gen. It enables experienced developers to quickly and easily populate databases with test data.   IS DATA COMPOSER™ AN END USER TOOL? Top No, Data Composer™ is a developer's tool. DC generates Insert SQL statements containing test data for use by developers or testing teams.   CAN DATA COMPOSER™ BE USED FOR REAL PRODUCTION DATA? Top Currently, no. This feature will be included in version 2. DC will then be used to populate lookup tables with values read from a text file, or used in data conversion projects to convert file dumps to populate production databases.   HOW DOES DATA COMPOSER™ WORK? Top Data Composer™ reads in reports that are created with the Advantage Gen toolset. The column definition report contains all the logical and physical information for all the tables in the database. The attribute definition report contains the permitted values (if used).   WHAT PLATFORMS CAN DATA COMPOSER™ RUN ON? Top Data Composer™ runs on the developer's workstation. It can run on Microsoft Windows 95 or Windows NT.   CAN DATA COMPOSER™ BE USED WITHOUT ADVANTAGE GEN? Top No. This is only a test data generator for Advantage Gen projects.   WHY DON'T I JUST CREATE MY OWN TEST DATA? Top You can, and many sites have been doing so for years. But now that Data Composer™ is here, this tedious and error prone task can be completely automated.   WHAT ABOUT MODEL CHANGES AFTER MY TEST DATA IS GENERATED? Top Data Composer™ comes with a version control facility. This function enables changes in the data model without losing user overides, or realistic test scenarios that have been saved within Data Composer™.   WHAT DOCUMENTATION IS PROVIDED WITH THE TOOL? Top Data Composer™ comes with a comprehensive User's Manual/Reference Guide which gives over 100 pages of detailed information. All of this information is also available online in the Data Composer™ help system.   CAN DATA COMPOSER™ BE RUN FROM A LAN? Top Data Composer™ is licensed on a workstation basis. It may be run from a LAN, as long as you guarantee, with software metering, that the maximum number of concurrent users does not exceed your number of licensees.   DOES DATA COMPOSER™ SUPPORT DOUBLE BYTE CHARACTER SETS (DBCS)? Top Yes. DC treats them as normal character fields within the Insert SQL statements that are used to populate the DBCS columns on the database.   WHAT'S NEW IN DATA COMPOSER™ V3? Top The new features in Data Composer™ v3 are many. Here is a summary of the main ones: The user interface is much more user friendly. Less drilling up and down of dialogs to update the overrides of columns to generate. Setting the foreign keys for parent child relationships is even easier. SQL Builder. Point and click to create your own Update or Select statements etc. Multiple 'pick list' scenarios for each model. Control card generation to aid loading high volumes of data from delimited text files. Permitted Values now have the same flexibilty as generic values. They can be read in sequence as well as at random. Values can be read in from Excel spreadsheets. View the database definition in a tree view. Create a database definition report for printing. Manually create a database schema. This is great for generating delimited text files for testing batch programs. Manually edit a database schema. Data Composer™ v3 is now an add on component for TurboData. You can use TurboData to connect directly to certain databases such as MS/SQL Server and Oracle. With a direct connection you can take advantage of the following: Read in the database schemas from non Advantage Gen projects. Direct loading and deletion of data. No need to seperately execute the generated SQL file. Real values can be read in directly from other databases. This is a very useful tool for converting data from one platform to another. View and update a table's data directly on a grid. Run SQL statements directly from TurboData.