SharePlex 8.6.6 - Administration Guide

Overview of the change-history target

A change history target differs from a replication target in that a change history target maintains a record of every change that occurs to a source object or objects, rather than simply maintaining a mirror of the current state of the source data. While regular replication overlays current target data with change data, change history inserts the change data to the target as a new record. The old data is preserved as a step-by-step record of change. The historical data can be queried and analyzed for such purposes as data mining or resolving customer disputes.

By using SharePlex to maintain change history on a secondary server, you can offload the overhead from the production database. Such overhead includes the SQL work of adding the history rows, the extra storage of those rows, and the query activity against the historical data.

Note: File, JMS, and Kafka targets support change history by default, because every source change is written as a separate XML record. There is no overlaying of old data with new. Metadata that is supported for these targets is included automatically when Post writes the XML. For a list of supported metadata, see the target command in the SharePlex Reference Guide.

Capabilities

This replication strategy supports the following:

• Identical or different source and target names
• Use of vertically partitioned replication
• Use of horizontally partitioned replication
• Use of named export and post queues
• Combination of regular replication and change-history replication of the same source object(s)

Supported targets

Oracle target

Operations supported

SharePlex supports adding a change history row for these operations:

• INSERT
• UPDATE
• DELETE
• TRUNCATE
• ALTER TABLE to DROP COLUMN (Note: for ADD COLUMN, Post adds a column to the table, but does not create a change history row.)

Operations not supported

• Changes made to UDT or VARRAY columns
• DBMS_LOB operation that is used to change a part of a LOB column (The value stored for that column on the target will not be the complete LOB column.)

How SharePlex maintains change history

In a change history configuration, each target table serve as a history table that records every change made to the source data as a continuous series of rows. Each new change row that SharePlex inserts includes the following:

• the values of the key columns
• the after image of the changed columns. For inserts and updates, the after image consists of the new values of the columns that were changed (or added in the case of an insert). For deletes, the after image consists of the key values plus the other columns set to null.
• (optionally) a set of metadata values that provide context for the change. For example, there is metadata that captures the userid of the user who made the change and the source system where the change was made (useful when change data is tracked from multiple databases).

SharePlex can be configured to include the before image of update operations in the history or to control which operation types are included in the history. For example, you could include only updates and deletes.

Configure change history

To configure change history, you use special syntax in the SharePlex configuration file and, optionally, configure filter rules and other attributes to customize the history to your needs.

Create a change-history configuration file

1. Make certain that SharePlex is installed and the system is prepared according to the instructions in the SharePlex Installation Guide.

2. Create the Oracle target history tables with the same name and structure as the source tables whose history they will track, but omit all constraints on all columns.

   Important: The Oracle target tables must not have PRIMARY KEY, FOREIGN KEY, UNIQUE, NOT NULL, or CHECK constraints, nor can columns be defined with a DEFAULT value. Because this is a history of changes, a row may have the same image as another row that has the same key. Post does not perform integrity checks on a change-history target.

3. Disable triggers on the target tables.
4. Allow no DML or DDL to be performed on the target tables except by SharePlex.

5. On the source system, create a configuration file using the following syntax. For more information about how to create a configuration file, see Create configuration files.

   datasource_specification
   src_owner.table	!cdc:tgt_owner.table	host@c.SID

   where:

   • Datasource:o.SID is the ORACLE_SID of the source Oracle instance.
   • src_owner.table is the fully qualified name of a source object (owner.object) or a wildcarded specification.
   • !cdc: identifies the target as a change-history table.
   • tgt_owner.table is the fully qualified name of the target history table or a wildcarded specification.
   • host is the target system.
   • c.SID specifies the target Oracle instance.

6. (Optional) Run the following script on the target tables to add default metadata columns with their default names. Post automatically populates the default metadata columns without any additional configuration. You can customize the script to meet your requirements.

   product_dir/util/add_change_tracking_columns.sql

   Notes:

   • The script only adds the default columns. To add optional columns, or to change a column name, use the target command to add them to the Post configuration. For a list of default and optional metadata columns, see the target command in the SharePlex Reference Guide.
   • The default columns are automatically added to new tables that are added to the SharePlex change history configuration.

Additional change history configuration options

This section describes how you can customize the SharePlex change history configuration.

Customize column names

You can use the target command with the colname option to customize the name of any target metadata column. For instructions, see the SharePlex Reference Guide.

Add the before image to each change row

You can include the before image of updates in the target table by setting the SP_OPO_TRACK_PREIMAGE parameter to U. This parameter causes Post to insert two rows to the target table for every change made to the tracked source table: one for the after image and one for the before image. The before image is composed of the key values plus the before values of the columns that were changed, unless the SP_OCT_USE_SUPP_KEYS parameter is used.

When before images are enabled, the SHAREPLEX_SOURCE_OPERATION column values for the two records will be:

UPDATE BEFORE

UPDATE AFTER

Note: The before row will not include the before image of any LOB columns, because the redo log does not contain the before image of LOBs.

You can override the global setting of SP_OPO_TRACK_PREIMAGE at the table level by using the set cdc preimage option of the target command.

For more information about SP_OPO_TRACK_PREIMAGE and the target command, see the SharePlex Reference Guide.

Include all columns of an operation in the history

To include the values of all table columns in each target history record, rather than only the changed columns, configure the following:

1. Turn on supplemental logging for all columns of the source tables that are being tracked. For example:

   Alter table emp ADD SUPPLEMENTAL LOG DATA (ALL) COLUMNS;

2. Set the SP_OCT_USE_SUPP_KEYS parameter to 1.
3. Set the SP_OCT_INCLUDE_UNCHANGED_COL to 1.

Note: When both SP_OCT_USE_SUPP_KEYS and SP_OPO_TRACK_PREIMAGE are enabled, the before image includes all column values as they were before the change.

Disable change history of an operation type

To disable the change history of a DML operation type, set the SP_OPO_TRACK_OPERATIONS parameter to the appropriate value or values. Separate values with a slash (/). For example, to maintain change history only for inserts and updates, change the parameter to I/U.The default is I/U/D which sends all DML operation types to the history records.

Set rules and filters

You can use the set rule option of the target command to apply conditions on columns to control whether a change is applied to the target history table. For example, you can specify a rule that if column 1 and column 3 are changed, then apply the operation and discard any changes that apply to other columns. For instructions, see the SharePlex Reference Guide.

Include COMMITs

By default, the COMMIT record is not included in the history tables. To configure Post to insert a row for every COMMIT, set the SP_OPO_TRACK_COMMITS parameter to 1.

Replicate Oracle DDL

This chapter contains the information that you need to know in order to replicate Oracle DDL operations that are supported by SharePlex.

Contents

DDL that SharePlex supports

SharePlex supports DDL replication for Oracle databases only. SharePlex replicates certain Oracle DDL changes that are written to the redo logs. Changes that bypass the redo logs are not replicated.

For details on the DDL that SharePlex supports, see the SharePlexSharePlex Release Notes.

In a cascading configuration, DDL replication is supported only from the source system to the intermediary system, but not from the intermediary system to target systems. For more information about cascading replication, see Configure replication through an intermediary system.

DDL against objects owned by the SharePlex user or against system-owned objects is not replicated.

Note:

Because the source and target databases can be of different versions in SharePlex replication, the source and target objects can be different. When DDL is applied to the target, it may fail if the operation is forbidden on the target but allowed on the source.

For a list of objects for which DDL is supported, see the SharePlex Release Notes.