Using administration tools to create a design

To use the Administration Tools interface to create an optimized design for your database, you must be a DBADMIN user. Follow these steps:

1. Log in as the dbadmin user and start Administration Tools.

2. From the main menu, start the database for which you want to create a design. The database must be running before you can create a design for it.

3. On the main menu, select Configuration Menu and click OK.

4. On the Configuration Menu, select Run Database Designer and click OK.

5. On the Select a database to design window, enter the name of the database for which you are creating a design and click OK.

6. On the Enter the directory for Database Designer output window, enter the full path to the directory to contain the design script, deployment script, backup script, and log files, and click OK.

   For information about the scripts, see Building a design.

7. On the Database Designer window, enter a name for the design and click OK.

   For more information about design names, see Design name.

8. On the Design Type window, choose which type of design to create and click OK.

   For a description of the design types, see Design types

9. The Select schema(s) to add to query search path window lists all the schemas in the database that you selected. Select the schemas that contain representative data that you want Database Designer to consider when creating the design and click OK.

   For more information about choosing schema and tables to submit to Database Designer, see Design tables with sample data.

10. On the Optimization Objectives window, select the objective you want for the database optimization:

    • Optimize with Queries

      For more information, see Design queries.

    • Update statistics

      For more information see Statistics analysis.

    • Deploy design

      For more information, see Deploying a design.

    For details about these objectives, see Optimization objectives.

11. The final window summarizes the choices you have made and offers you two choices:

    • Proceed with building the design, and deploying it if you specified to deploy it immediately. If you did not specify to deploy, you can review the design and deployment scripts and deploy them manually, as described in Deploying designs manually.

    • Cancel the design and go back to change some of the parameters as needed.

12. Creating a design can take a long time.To cancel a running design from the Administration Tools window, enter Ctrl+C.

To create a design for the VMart example database, see Using Database Designer to create a comprehensive design in Getting Started.