Preface

Oracle Streams Replication Administrator's Guide describes the features and functionality of Streams that can be used for data replication. This document contains conceptual information about Streams replication, along with information about configuring and managing a Streams replication environment.

This preface contains these topics:

• Audience
• Organization
• Related Documentation
• Conventions
• Documentation Accessibility

Audience

Oracle Streams Replication Administrator's Guide is intended for database administrators who create and maintain Streams replication environments. These administrators perform one or more of the following tasks:

• Plan for a Streams replication environment
• Configure a Streams replication environment
• Configure conflict resolution in a Streams replication environment
• Administer a Streams replication environment
• Monitor a Streams replication environment
• Perform necessary troubleshooting activities for a Streams replication environment

To use this document, you need to be familiar with relational database concepts, SQL, distributed database administration, general Oracle Streams concepts, Advanced Queuing concepts, PL/SQL, and the operating systems under which you run a Streams environment.

Organization

This document contains:

Part I, "Streams Replication Concepts"

Contains chapters that describe conceptual information relating to Streams.

Chapter 1, "Understanding Streams Replication"

Contains general conceptual information about Streams replication. Includes information about change capture, propagation, change apply, and instantiation in a Streams replication environment.

Chapter 2, "Instantiation and Streams Replication"

Contains conceptual information about instantiation and Streams replication. Includes conceptual information about preparing database objects for instantiation and information about using various utilities to perform instantiations.

Chapter 3, "Streams Conflict Resolution"

Contains conceptual information about conflicts. Includes information about the possible types of conflicts, conflict detection, conflict avoidance, and conflict resolution in Streams environments.

Chapter 4, "Streams Tags"

Contains conceptual information about Streams tags. Includes information about how tag values are used in rules, how a tag value can be set for an apply process, and how to avoid change cycling using tags.

Chapter 5, "Streams Heterogeneous Information Sharing"

Contains conceptual information about heterogeneous information sharing using Streams. Includes information about sharing information in an Oracle database with a non-Oracle database, sharing information in a non-Oracle database with an Oracle database, and using Streams to share information between two non-Oracle databases.

Part II, "Configuring and Administering Streams Replication"

Contains chapters that illustrate example environments.

Chapter 6, "Configuring Streams Replication"

Contains information about configuring a single source and multiple source Streams replication environment. Also includes instructions for adding objects and databases to an existing Streams environment.

Chapter 7, "Managing Capture, Propagation, and Apply"

Contains information about managing capture processes, propagations, and apply processes in a Streams replication environment. Also includes instructions for managing Streams tags, and for performing database point-in-time recovery at a destination database in a Streams environment.

Chapter 8, "Performing Instantiations"

Contains contains instructions for performing instantiations in a Streams replication environment. Database objects must be instantiated at a destination database before changes to these objects can be replicated.

Chapter 9, "Managing Logical Change Records (LCRs)"

Contains instructions for managing logical change records (LCRs) in a Streams replication environment. Specifically, this chapter includes requirements for managing LCRs, instructions for constructing LCRs, and information about managing LCRs that contain LONG, LONG RAW, or LOB column data.

Chapter 10, "Monitoring Streams Replication"

Contains information about monitoring a Streams replication environment. This chapter contains example queries that you may want to use to monitor your Streams replication environment.

Chapter 11, "Troubleshooting Streams Replication"

Contains information about identifying and correcting common apply process problems in a Streams replication environment.

Part III, "Example Replication Environments"

Contains chapters that illustrate example environments.

Chapter 12, "Simple Single Source Replication Example"

Contains a step by step example that configures a simple single source replication environment using Streams.

Chapter 13, "Single Source Heterogeneous Replication Example"

Contains a step by step example that configures a single source heterogeneous replication environment using Streams. Also contains step by step examples for adding objects and databases to this environment.

Chapter 14, "Multiple Source Replication Example"

Contains a step by step example that configures a multiple source replication environment using Streams.

Part IV, "Appendixes"

Contains chapters that illustrate example environments.

Appendix A, "Migrating Advanced Replication to Streams"

Contains information about migrating an Advanced Replication environment to a Streams environment. This chapter provides a conceptual overview of the steps in this process and documents each step with procedures and examples.

Related Documentation

For more information, see these Oracle resources:

• Oracle Streams Concepts and Administration
• Oracle Database Concepts
• Oracle Database Administrator's Guide
• Oracle Database SQL Reference
• PL/SQL Packages and Types Reference
• PL/SQL User's Guide and Reference
• Oracle Database Utilities
• Oracle Database Heterogeneous Connectivity Administrator's Guide
• Streams online help for the Streams tool in the Oracle Enterprise Manager Console

You may find more information about a particular topic in the other documents in the Oracle documentation set.

Oracle error message documentation is only available in HTML. If you only have access to the Oracle Documentation CD, you can browse the error messages by range. Once you find the specific range, use your browser's "find in page" feature to locate the specific message. When connected to the Internet, you can search for a specific error message using the error message search feature of the Oracle online documentation.

Many of the examples in this book use the sample schemas of the seed database, which is installed by default when you install Oracle. Refer to Oracle Database Sample Schemas for information on how these schemas were created and how you can use them yourself.

Printed documentation is available for sale in the Oracle Store at

http://oraclestore.oracle.com/

To download free release notes, installation documentation, white papers, or other collateral, please visit the Oracle Technology Network (OTN). You must register online before using OTN; registration is free and can be done at

http://otn.oracle.com/membership/

If you already have a username and password for OTN, then you can go directly to the documentation section of the OTN Web site at

http://otn.oracle.com/documentation/

In addition, you can find resources related to Oracle Streams at

http://otn.oracle.com/products/dataint/content.html

Conventions

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

• Conventions in Text
• Conventions in Code Examples

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 Uold_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;

Documentation Accessibility

Our goal is to make Oracle products, services, and supporting documentation accessible, with good usability, to the disabled community. To that end, our documentation includes features that make information available to users of assistive technology. This documentation is available in HTML format, and contains markup to facilitate access by the disabled community. Standards will continue to evolve over time, and Oracle is actively engaged with other market-leading technology vendors to address technical obstacles so that our documentation can be accessible to all of our customers. For additional information, visit the Oracle Accessibility Program Web site at

http://www.oracle.com/accessibility/

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.

Accessibility of Links to External Web Sites in Documentation

This documentation may contain links to Web sites of other companies or organizations that Oracle does not own or control. Oracle neither evaluates nor makes any representations regarding the accessibility of these Web sites.