Oracle^® Business Intelligence Presentation Services Administration Guide > Administering the Oracle BI Presentation Catalog > Replicating Presentation Catalogs >

About Replication Log Files

Replication log files record modifications made to catalog items that are subject to replication. There are two types of replication log files:

• Change log files — Contain records of modifications to catalog items that were made locally. These files are stored in {presentationcatalogpath}/replication/changelog folder, where {presentationcatalogpath} is the full path to the Presentation Catalog folder.
• Playback log files — Contain records of modifications to catalog items that were replayed from other instances of Oracle BI Presentation Services. These files are stored in {presentationcatalogpath}/replication/playback folder, where {presentationcatalogpath} is the Presentation Catalog folder.

Replication log files are kept on disk indefinitely, until you periodically clean them out. When performing replication operations, Oracle BI Presentation Services reads only replication log files from the time interval specified by the ReadLogRecordsSinceHoursAgo element in the Oracle BI Presentation Services configuration file (instanceconfig.xml). For more information on the ReadLogRecordsSinceHoursAgo element, seeEditing the instanceconfig.xml File for Replication.

While you might want to review replication log files, for example, for troubleshooting purposes, you should never edit log files manually.

Replication Log File Records

A replication log file contains different types of records, with each record consisting of a number of fields separated by commas. The most important types of records that you will see in a replication log file are:

• File header record. Written at the beginning of each log file, it contains the following fields:

  Size, Type, Timestamp, Version, Flags

• Oracle BI Presentation Services startup record. Written each time Oracle BI Presentation Services starts up, it contains the following fields:

  Size, Type, Timestamp

• Before change record. Written when a Presentation Catalog item is about to be changed, it contains the following fields:

  Size, Type, Timestamp, Change sequence number, Change type

• After change record. Written immediately after a Presentation Catalog operation has been completed, it contains the following fields:

  Size, Type, Timestamp, Change sequence number, Operation outcome

• File finished record. Written as the last record in a replication log file, it contains the following fields:

  Size, Type, Timestamp, Name of next log file

where:

• Size. Record size in bytes encoded as a hexadecimal number.
• Type. Record type, such as:
  • H. File header record
  • S. Oracle BI Presentation Services startup record
  • B. Before change record
  • A. After change Record
  • F. File finished record
• Timestamp. The timestamp of the record, written as a hexadecimal number representing the number of seconds from midnight (00:00:00), January 1, 1970 UTC.
• Change sequence number. A sequence number that should be the same in corresponding Before change and After change records.
• Change type. The type of change, written as a hexadecimal number representing a combination of the following flags:
  • 1. Insert
  • 2. Delete
  • 4. Write
  • 8. Change catalog item information
  • 16. Change owner
  • 32. Change security
• Operation outcome. The operation result, either:
  • 0. Fail
  • 1. Success