So, I have this java based data trasformation / masking tool, which I wanted to test out on Oracle 10g. The good part with Oracle 10g is that you get a load of sample schemas with half a million records in some. The schemas are : SH, OE, HR, IX and etc. So, I installed 10g, found out that the installation scripts are under ORACLE_HOME/demo/scripts.

I customized these scripts a bit to run in batch mode. That solves one half of my requirement - to create source data for my testing my data transformation software. The second half of the requirement is that I create the same schemas under different names (TR_HR, TR_OE and so on...) without any data. These schemas would represent my target schemas. So, in short, my software would pick up data from a table in a schema and load it up in to the same table in a different schema.

Now, I have two issues in creating my target schema and emptying it.

• I would like this in a batch job. But the oracle scripts you get, the sample schema names are not configurable. So, I tried creating a script, replacing OE with TR_OE, HR with TR_HR and so on. However, this approach is kind of irritating coz the sample schemas are kind of complicated in the way they are created; Oracle creates synonyms, views, materialized views, data types and lot of weird stuff.
• I would like the target schemas (TR_HR, TR_OE,...) to be empty. But some of the schemas have circular references, which would not allow me to delete data. The only work around seems to be removing certain foreign keys, deleting data and then adding the constraints back.

Is there any easy way to all this, without all this fuss? I would need a complicated data set for my testing (complicated as in tables with triggers, multiple hierarchies.. for instance.. a child table that has children up to 5 levels, a parent table that refers to an IOT table and an IOT table that refers to a non-IOT table etc..). The sample schemas are just about perfect from a data set perspective. The only challenge I see is in automating this whole process of loading up the source schemas, and then creating the target schemas and emptying them. Appreciate your help and suggestions.