Preface

Oracle Database Advanced Replication describes the features and functionality of Advanced Replication. Specifically, Oracle Database Advanced Replication contains conceptual information about Advanced Replication, as well as information about planning your replication environment and troubleshooting replication problems. Oracle Database Advanced Replication also contains an introduction to the Replication Management tool in the Oracle Enterprise Manager Console.

This preface contains these topics:

Audience

Oracle Database Advanced Replication is intended for database administrators and application developers who develop and maintain replication environments. These administrators and application developers perform one or more of the following tasks:

Plan for a replication environment
Configure the following types of replication environments:
- Read-only materialized view
- Updatable materialized view
- Single master replication
- Multimaster replication
Use deployment templates to create a materialized view environment
Configure conflict resolution
Administer a replication environment
Perform troubleshooting activities when necessary
Manage job queues
Manage deferred transactions
Use the Replication Management tool in the Oracle Enterprise Manager Console to create, monitor, and manage replication environments

To use this document, you need to be familiar with relational database concepts, distributed database administration, PL/SQL (if using procedural replication), and the operating system under which you run an Advanced Replication environment.

Organization

This document contains:

Chapter 1, "Introduction to Advanced Replication"

Introduces the concepts and terminology of Advanced Replication.

Chapter 2, "Master Replication Concepts and Architecture"

Describes the concepts and architecture of multimaster replication.

Chapter 3, "Materialized View Concepts and Architecture"

Describes the concepts and architecture of materialized view replication. This chapter also discusses the prerequisites of building a materialized view environment.

Chapter 4, "Deployment Templates Concepts and Architecture"

Describes the concepts and architecture of deployment templates. This chapter also discusses designing deployment templates.

Chapter 5, "Conflict Resolution Concepts and Architecture"

Describes the concepts and architecture of conflict resolution. This chapter describes conflict resolution methods.

Chapter 6, "Planning Your Replication Environment"

Describes planning your replication environment, including information about setting initialization parameters and preparing your environment for replication.

Chapter 7, "Introduction to the Replication Management Tool"

Introduces you to the features of Oracle Replication Manager, a Java-based tool for creating, administering, and monitoring a replication environment.

Appendix A, "Troubleshooting Replication Problems"

Describes diagnosing and solving common replication problems.

Appendix B, "Column Length Semantics and Unicode"

Contains information about replication support for column length semantics and Unicode.

Conventions

This section describes the conventions used in the text and code examples of this documentation set. It describes:

Conventions in Text

We use various conventions in text to help you more quickly identify special terms. The following table describes those conventions and provides examples of their use.

Convention	Meaning	Example
Bold	Bold typeface indicates terms that are defined in the text or terms that appear in a glossary, or both.	When you specify this clause, you create an index-organized table.
Italics	Italic typeface indicates book titles or emphasis.	Oracle Database Concepts Ensure that the recovery catalog and target database do not reside on the same disk.
`UPPERCASE monospace (fixed-width) font`	Uppercase monospace typeface indicates elements supplied by the system. Such elements include parameters, privileges, datatypes, RMAN keywords, SQL keywords, SQL*Plus or utility commands, packages and methods, as well as system-supplied column names, database objects and structures, usernames, and roles.	You can specify this clause only for a `NUMBER` column. You can back up the database by using the `BACKUP` command. Query the `TABLE_NAME` column in the `USER_TABLES` data dictionary view. Use the `DBMS_STATS`.`GENERATE_STATS` procedure.
`lowercase monospace (fixed-width) font`	Lowercase monospace typeface indicates executables, filenames, directory names, and sample user-supplied elements. Such elements include computer and database names, net service names, and connect identifiers, as well as user-supplied database objects and structures, column names, packages and classes, usernames and roles, program units, and parameter values. Note: Some programmatic elements use a mixture of UPPERCASE and lowercase. Enter these elements as shown.	Enter `sqlplus` to open SQL*Plus. The password is specified in the `orapwd` file. Back up the datafiles and control files in the `/disk1/oracle/dbs` directory. The `department_id`, `department_name`, and `location_id` columns are in the `hr.departments` table. Set the `QUERY_REWRITE_ENABLED` initialization parameter to `true.` Connect as `oe` user. The `JRepUtil` class implements these methods.
`lowercase italic monospace (fixed-width) font`	Lowercase italic monospace font represents placeholders or variables.	You can specify the `parallel_clause`. Run `U``old_release``.SQL` where `old_release` refers to the release you installed prior to upgrading.

Conventions in Code Examples

Code examples illustrate SQL, PL/SQL, SQL*Plus, or other command-line statements. They are displayed in a monospace (fixed-width) font and separated from normal text as shown in this example:

SELECT username FROM dba_users WHERE username = 'MIGRATE';

The following table describes typographic conventions used in code examples and provides examples of their use.

Convention	Meaning	Example
[ ]	Brackets enclose one or more optional items. Do not enter the brackets.	DECIMAL (digits [ , precision ])
{ }	Braces enclose two or more items, one of which is required. Do not enter the braces.	{ENABLE \| DISABLE}
\|	A vertical bar represents a choice of two or more options within brackets or braces. Enter one of the options. Do not enter the vertical bar.	{ENABLE \| DISABLE} [COMPRESS \| NOCOMPRESS]
...	Horizontal ellipsis points indicate either: That we have omitted parts of the code that are not directly related to the example That you can repeat a portion of the code	CREATE TABLE ... AS subquery; SELECT col1, col2, ... , coln FROM employees;
. . .	Vertical ellipsis points indicate that we have omitted several lines of code not directly related to the example.	SQL> SELECT NAME FROM V$DATAFILE; NAME ------------------------------------ /fsl/dbs/tbs_01.dbf /fs1/dbs/tbs_02.dbf . . . /fsl/dbs/tbs_09.dbf 9 rows selected.
Other notation	You must enter symbols other than brackets, braces, vertical bars, and ellipsis points as shown.	acctbal NUMBER(11,2); acct CONSTANT NUMBER(4) := 3;
Italics	Italicized text indicates placeholders or variables for which you must supply particular values.	CONNECT SYSTEM/system_password DB_NAME = database_name
UPPERCASE	Uppercase typeface indicates elements supplied by the system. We show these terms in uppercase in order to distinguish them from terms you define. Unless terms appear in brackets, enter them in the order and with the spelling shown. However, because these terms are not case sensitive, you can enter them in lowercase.	SELECT last_name, employee_id FROM employees; SELECT * FROM USER_TABLES; DROP TABLE hr.employees;
lowercase	Lowercase typeface indicates programmatic elements that you supply. For example, lowercase indicates names of tables, columns, or files. Note: Some programmatic elements use a mixture of UPPERCASE and lowercase. Enter these elements as shown.	SELECT last_name, employee_id FROM employees; sqlplus hr/hr CREATE USER mjones IDENTIFIED BY ty3MU9;

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Accessibility of Code Examples in Documentation

JAWS, a Windows screen reader, may not always correctly read the code examples in this document. The conventions for writing code require that closing braces should appear on an otherwise empty line; however, JAWS may not always read a line of text that consists solely of a bracket or brace.

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