Oracle7 Server Distributed Systems Volume II: Replicated Data

Replication Support for Master Sites

The symmetric replication facility supports the replication of tables, views, indexes, synonyms, triggers, and packages at master sites. All master sites participating in a replicated environment must have the same replicated objects. If you only want to replicate a subset of the objects to a given site, you should consider designating that site as a snapshot site.

Replication Support for Tables

The symmetric replication facility supports replication of both data-level (DML) and schema-level (DDL) changes to replicated tables. Whenever you perform an INSERT, UPDATE, or DELETE on a table replicated using row-level replication, Oracle ensures that the change is ultimately applied at each replica of the table. Whenever you update a table by calling a replicated procedure, your procedure call is ultimately replicated to all other sites in the replicated environment. Propagation of these changes between master sites is explained in detail starting

The symmetric replication facility supports the following data types: NUMBER,DATE, VARCHAR2, CHAR, ROWID, and RAW. Your table can include columns with other data types (e.g. LONG and LONG RAW, but these columns will not be populated by the symmetric replication facility.

Whenever you create, alter, or drop a table using the procedures provided in the DBMS_REPCAT package, that change is ultimately applied at all other master sites in the replicated environment, by the replication facility. Propagation of these changes between master sites is explained in detail starting .

Replication Support for Non-table Objects

Any changes that you make to a non-table object using the procedures provided in the DBMS_REPCAT package are ultimately replicated to all other sites in the replicated environment. You should always use the procedures provided in the DBMS_REPCAT package to update non-table replicated objects.

For example, suppose that you choose to replace a stored procedure at a master site. If that procedure is used to update a table that is replicated using row-level replication, any changes made through the procedure will continue to be properly forwarded to the other replicated sites.

If you are using procedural replication, however, you must only update this procedure using the method for altering a replicated object described . This ensures that the proper replication support for this procedure is generated at all replication sites.