IBM manual Populating the database, Using SQL statements, 232 DB2 Deployment Guide

￿Target directories:

If the backup image contains restrictions to specific directories, these directories must exist on the target system. Otherwise, performing a redirected restore is required.

￿Different platforms:

Cross platform restore is not supported. You have to prepare a separate backup image for each platform because the backup image from a Windows system cannot be restored to a UNIX system. You also must have different images for 32-bit and 64-bit versions of the different operation systems.

￿Online/Offline backup image:

If you ship an offline backup with your installation package, this backup can be restored directly. If you ship an online backup, make sure you also ship the required log files — otherwise the backup cannot be restored. When you take the database backup, you can enable it to include the required log file in the database backup image.

We recommend that restoring the backup image is handled separately from the installation of your application. Providing some documentation about the source database layout can help the restore process.

5.4 Populating the database

If the pre-configured database is deployed by restoring a backup image, the data is in place after the database is restored. Populating the data is required for the database created from scratch.

You can populate the database using the INSERT statement or by the load or import utilities. There are other data movement tools. In this section, we focus on the approaches that utilize the DB2 features and functions.

5.4.1 Using SQL statements

Populating data using SQL statements is usually a preferable method if the data to be inserted is input by users or is generated on the fly. There are several options to create the INSERT statements. A straightforward but time consuming method is to create the INSERT statements manually and store them in a file. If the statements are to be executed by an application, they can be created on the fly. This is appropriate, for instance, if the statements depend on user inputs. You also can store the data and rules in a repository and use an application to generate a script with all the statements.

232DB2 Deployment Guide