Coverage Display
Coverage is display of metadata that is used to preview the results of data element identification and rule assignment. Coverage displayed in the user interface is always a display of coverage for a single metadata. Coverage against multiple metadata is only available from coverage reporting. Coverage display is only available from the Coverage tab of an open disguise project.
Coverage display is provided as a tree presentation of data fields from the selected metadata source with additional information added for data element and rule identification. Coverage requires a project to be open since the open project is the source of the data elements and rules that are displayed.
The coverage display is a compilation of the data element and rule definitions which will apply during disguise processing. The coverage display will show the names of the data element and source data identifier that were matched to fields in the metadata. In addition, the defined rules that reference the data element specifications are correlated to the fields in the metadata display. If a rule is applied multiple times, each instance is displayed with an occurrence number, for example Name Rule (#1) for the first occurrence and Name Rule (#2) for the second occurrence. The 
icon in the Rule column of the coverage display indicates that the rule will be applied to the metadata in that row during disguise processing.
Metadata from COBOL or PL/I layouts and from DBMS definitions for DB2, MS SQL Server, Oracle, and Sybase are supported. A COBOL or PL/I layout may contain multiple layouts, but coverage is only displayed for one layout at a time. A list of the available layouts is displayed so you can select the desired layout and can easily switch between layouts.
If the Coverage Display tab is open, any changes you make to the data element or rule can be updated in the view by clicking the refresh button.
You can select View Coverage immediately after your metadata is added to the Manage Metadata view. However, you need to run coverage analysis before you can view coverage reports.
Coverage Conflicts
For data privacy rules to be applied correctly, a source field can only be identified as being one data element, and only one rule can replace each field. Coverage is used to find definitions which violate these constraints. It is possible to define data elements such that more than one source data identifier identifies a field and also such that more than one data element identifies a field.
A conflict occurs when a source field is identified to be more than one data element or multiple rules replace the same data. Identifiers in multiple data elements can identify the same source field, and it is not a conflict unless both identifiers have the same weight. As long as one of the identifiers is more qualified than the other, there is no problem - the identifier with the highest weight is used.
The coverage display shows the highest priority source data identifier that applies to the field. When two identifiers from different data elements are at the same weight, and they both identify the same data, a conflict is displayed. You must take an action to resolve the conflict before requesting disguise for that layout or the disguise will fail.
Data element identification uses the source data identifier with the highest weight. If more than one data element is defined for a field, they are compared and the data element with the highest weight source data identifier is selected and displayed in the coverage view. Source data identifiers are assigned weights from most specific (highest) to least specific (lowest) in the following order:
- Member or table name (highest weight)
- Data set or schema name
- Group levels specified
- Multiple field identifier
- Field name
- Field name pattern
- Data type
- Special processing used (lowest weight).
When the source data identifiers include a wildcard and more than one data identifier could match a field, the one with the most matching characters will be used. If the same number of characters match, it will be a conflict. This allows multiple source data identifiers within the same data element to match a field, while only allowing one to be selected for use.
Enabling Previous Inclusion/Exclusion Behavior
In previous File-AID Data Privacy releases, the SDIs with the highest weighting value would identify the field, with both inclusion and exclusion SDIs being applied. This meant that if an exclusion had a lower weight than an inclusion, it would be ignored. Beginning with release 20.05, the default behavior has been changed to process the exclusions first and filter the metadata candidate, and then to match the inclusions.
Because the previous behavior has been in place for some time, there may be users who want to keep that behavior. To help those users, a method has been provided to override the new default and retain the previous inclusion/exclusion behavior. This is done by specifying the property "sdimatch.process.exclusion.first" in the configuration file.
To enable previous inclusion/exclusion behavior:
- Open the config.ini file as an administrator in edit mode. The file is located in one of the following locations:
Windows: C:\Program Files\Compuware\File-AID Services\MMCServer\eclipse\configuration\config.ini
Linux: <install_location>\File-AID Services\MMCServer\eclipse\configuration\config.ini - Add the following property as the last line in the config.ini file: sdimatch.process.exclusion.
Restart File-AID Services.