Data Definition Language (DDL) is a subset of SQL. It is a language
for describing data and its relationships in a database.
You can generate DDL in a script for database objects to:
- Keep a snapshot of the database structure
- Set up a test system where the database acts like the production system
but contains no data
- Produce templates for new objects that you can create based on existing
ones. For example, generate the DDL for the Customer table, then edit the
DDL to create the table Customer_New with the same schema.
When you generate DDL, you can use the DDL statements to recreate everything
about a database except for its contents. You can generate the DDL to completely
recreate the database, or choose to recreate only certain aspects of it, such
as its current statistics. You can also limit the statements that are generated
so that only a segment of the database is recreated, for example, the statistics
for a subset of tables.