What are the new features introduced in Shareplex 7.6? (4300071)

What are the new features introduced in Shareplex 7.6?

What are the new features introduced in Shareplex 7.6?

General information.

With every new version of Shareplex, there are new features introduced and Shareplex 7.6 is no exception. The following list comprises prominent new features introduced in Shareplex 7.6, though this list is by no means comprehensive and one will have to sift through Release Notes and Shareplex manuals to explore all of them. The list comes handy as a ready reference and one can drill down to finer details by exploring Knowledgebase, Shareplex manuals, etc.

1. Since Shareplex 7.6 is 64 bit application, it does not need Oracle 32 bit instant client anymore and will work fine with Oracle 64 bit client.

2. The syntax for compare is made extremely simple though the old syntax also works for backward compatibility

In its simplest form, one can run compare by only specifying the source table owner and name without having to specify details like target table, target server, etc. Moreover, a number of keywords like "table", "target" "to" have been ommitted. Here is it:

sp_ctrl>compare owner.source_table_name

The full syntax includes source and target table names and schemas, as well as the target server name.

3. The keyword "repair" can be specified with compare if using the old syntax of compare. But there is a separate command called repair which has similar syntax like new compare command but will actually sync the target table. Here is the simplest form of repair command:

sp_ctl>repair owner.source_table_name

The full syntax includes source and target table names and schemas, as well as the target server name.

4. Oracle Advanced Compression is supported on 11gR2

5. Table encryption is supported though not for key column.

6. SecureFile LOBs are supported unless created with one of the following:

Encryption

Compression

Deduplication

No logging

7. Compare now supports wildcards.

8. Instead of "compare config" there is a new command that will do the same job and is called "compare using". This is to bring compare in conformity with copy.

9. Shareplex only has "live" option of activation. Meaning that it will skip a table if it is not able to lock it but will revisit it once it is done with the rest of the tables. In older versions it used to fail if using the non-live option and only worked this way in "live" option. Moreover, if any table fails during activation, then the activation will still succeed if there are other tables that do not run into a failure.

10. It is possible to skip DDL for some objects (DDL filtering). There is a new internal table named SHAREPLEX_DDL_CONTROL owned by Shareplex schema that can house such tablenames and their schema whose DDL one wishes to ignore. See Admin Guide for details.

11. Activation logs the SCN of each table that is activated. This may be very useful for troubleshooting if there are issues during activation. The following is a sample entry:

Starting replication for "OWNER"."TABLENAME" at SCN 32888815101

Starting replication for "OWNER "."TABLENAME " at SCN 32888815110

12. Post logs the most recent SCN (source's) committed in the event log. This may help in resync of target database if the Post queue was reset due to errors, slowness, etc. The following is a sample entry:

Notice 2011-03-28 08:22:43.969765 21768 2585389792 Poster: Last committed SCN 32888828906

Here is a chronology of the options available in “activate config” command that would shed some light on the options “live” and “nolock”: In versions of Shareplex prior to 7.6.1, the default behavior of the command “activate config” without specifying any option was to lock a table to bring it in replication and if for any reason a table could not be locked, then the activation would fail. There was a “live” option which would allow the activation process to move to the next table and so on and revisit the table(s) that failed to lock earlier so as to lock them. This iteration would go on till all tables could be locked and successfully activated or the activation would fail if it took a time which exceeded the value of the parameter SP_OCF_LOCK_WAIT_TIME. Starting with SharePlex 7.6.1 there is no “live” option needed to be specified as all activation occur in “live” mode and there are no option available for the command. Starting with SharePlex 7.6.3, there is a “nolock” option in replication that allows a table to be inducted into replication without having to wait to lock it. Of course this comes at an increased complexity of partial transactions replicated for such tables which can potentially result in out of sync. See article 134680 for details.