Built-in MSSQL driver support plugin

Summary

The current implementation is simply the earlier implementation of the database masking options in the new driver support plugin framework. No optimizations have been implemented yet; stay tuned for optimizations in a future release.

Tasks

For in-place jobs:

1. Disable Constraints disables and re-enables constraints on all columns of the table(s) included in the job ruleset.

2. Drop Indexes drops and re-creates indexes on only masked columns.

3. Disable Triggers disables and re-enables triggers on all tables included in the job ruleset.

For on-the-fly jobs, the tasks will execute on all columns in all tables included in the ruleset.

Task execution order

The order of task execution for built-in driver support plugins is fixed/unmodifiable.

The order of the MSSQL Driver Support tasks is as follows:

preJob:

1. Disable Constraints

2. Drop Indexes

3. Disable Triggers

postJob:

1. Disable Triggers

2. Drop Indexes

3. Disable Constraints

Enabling tasks on a job

For instructions on how to enable driver support tasks on jobs, see API calls for managing masking job driver support tasks.

Known limitations

• Referential integrity is not enforced. For example, in the current implementation, there is no validation that a primary key or unique constraint column being referenced by a foreign key column are masked with the same deterministic algorithm.

• MSSQL plugin version 1.1.7 does not support non-clustered columnstore index handling for MSSQL versions 2012 and 2014. This limitation arises because such indices render the tables read-only, which is incompatible with the masking use case requirements.

  • On-the-Fly (OTF) masking: OTF masking remains operational as it involves truncating the table before performing insertions.

  • In-Place (IP) masking: Unfortunately, IP masking will encounter errors due to the aforementioned constraints.