A script driven infrastructure is provided in order to selectively move structure and data from a source database to a target database. The structure and data is moved using a data transfer mechanism, where the data is contained in disk files stored on the source database and it has corresponding script files describing the structure of the data. The transfer of the data is driven by the script files which allows for selective transfer of structure and data. In one aspect of the invention, the disk files are stored in SQL format and the script files are saved in SQL format and XML format, where the script files saved in SQL format create objects and relational constraints in the target database, and the script files stored in XML format drive the transfer process of the data stored in the disk files.