Oracle GoldenGate can be used to populate lower-level environments, like QA, development, pilot, and user acceptance databases. Depending on the business needs, these environments are created as full copies of production, for example, for performance testing or pilot environments, while others will be a fraction of the data, such as for development purposes.

If only a subset of data is needed, then the Oracle GoldenGate administrator can configure FILTER conditions in the TABLE statements in the Extract process. The administrator must pay attention to lookup tables, which are typically not filtered, and normal user tables, which are filtered.

In applications with foreign keys, this can be easier compared to applications without foreign keys. If the application does not contain foreign keys, then you will need to work with the application team to determine the appropriate filters to set for replicating fractional data.

Additionally, there may be a need to obfuscate or mask certain columns. This can be done using Oracle GoldenGate’s built in transformation routines, including SQLEXEC / DBFUNCTION calls, or by triggers on the target tables.