Development and QA need data that looks like production: the same volumes, the same odd values, the same relationships between tables. Security needs customer data to stay out of test, staging and development, where access is usually wider and controls are lighter. Most teams end up choosing one side.
This 80-second video shows how dbSlice does both in the same step: it masks the columns you choose while it copies, so the real value is never written to the test database.
Who it is for
- Information security teams that have to sign off on every copy of production.
- DBAs who refresh QA and staging and want the same rules every time.
- QA leads who need realistic data without asking for an exception.
What the video shows
- Masked in flight. Each row is treated before it is written to the target. There is no unmasked
intermediate copy to clean up later, and it works between different engines, for example from SQL Server to PostgreSQL.
- Field by field. You choose a treatment per column: keep the first characters of a phone, hide the
digits of a tax ID, keep only the domain of an e-mail, build a value from a template with the row key, set a fixed value, hash it, or leave it empty. A sample row shows the result before you run.
- Keys stay intact. Primary keys, foreign keys and the key column of the operation never change, so joins
still return the same rows and the application under test keeps working.
- Consistent hashing. The same input always gives the same code across tables. With a secret, dbSlice uses
HMAC-SHA256, so a tax ID or a phone number cannot be rebuilt by trying every possible value.
- Every night. Save the copy as a job with its masking map and run it from the command line or Windows Task
Scheduler.
What it does not do
dbSlice applies the rules you set. It does not decide on its own which columns hold personal data, and using it does not make a process compliant by itself; that decision stays with your security and privacy team. Masking needs a dbSlice Desktop or Server license.
Read more
The full walkthrough, with every treatment and an example, is on masked staging copy. To schedule it, see database sync from the CLI. The free version is on the Microsoft Store.
