GDS Catalog Database and GDS Catalog Setup

Learn how to set up and protect a Global Data Services (GDS) catalog database to support your GDS configuration with high availability and reliability.

What You Need to Know About Creating the GDS Catalog

Every Global Data Services configuration must have a Global Data Services catalog. The Global Data Services catalog can reside on the same host as a GDS configuration database, but Oracle does not recommend this scenario for large configurations. Oracle recommends that you use Oracle high availability features such as Oracle Real Application Clusters (Oracle RAC) and Oracle Data Guard to protect the Global Data Services catalog against outages.

Global Data Services Catalog Requirements

Before starting the deployment, verify the following:

The GDS catalog database uses a server parameter file (SPFILE).
For Oracle RAC databases, single client access name (SCAN) is configured.
Network connectivity is established and bidirectional for the following:
GSM Listener port (Default: 1522)
Database Listener port (Default: 1521)
ONS ports (Default: 6123 local, 6234 remote)
The host running GDSCTL has bidirectional connectivity to the GDS catalog database listener.
Environment variables are set correctly. Specificially:
ORACLE_HOME
PATH includes $ORACLE_HOME/bin
TNS_ADMIN is set to $ORACLE_HOME/network/admin

The Global Data Services catalog must be protected for high availability and disaster recovery.

Note:

Oracle recommends that the Global Data Services administrator does not directly connect to the catalog database, despite having a user account on the catalog database. Global Data Services administrators can use the GDSCTL utility to manage Global Data Services. GDSCTL connects to the Global Data Services catalog with the credentials that the Global Data Services administrator provides when running GDSCTL commands.

For example:

GDSCTL> create gdscatalog -database serv1:1521:catdb.example.com
    -user gsm_admin

In the preceding example, serv1:1521:catdb.example.com is an Easy Connect string that contains the host name and port number of the listener that is used to connect to the database, and catdb.example.com is the service name for the Global Data Services catalog database.

You designate one database as the primary repository for the Global Data Services catalog. You can use existing high availability technologies, such as Oracle RAC, Oracle Data Guard, and Oracle Clusterware, to protect the Global Data Services catalog.