Materialization is the process of creating and activating subscriptions, and copying data from the primary database to the replicate database, thereby initializing the replicate database.
Before you can replicate data from a primary database, you must set up and populate each replicate database so that it is in a state consistent with that of the primary database. There are two types of subscription materialization supported by Replication Server:
Bulk materialization – manually creating and activating a subscription and populating a replicate database using data unload and load utilities outside the control of the replication system.
Automatic materialization – creating a subscription and populating a replicate database using Replication Server commands.
Because of the limitations of reading a transaction log (a complete picture of all table data is not available), Replication Agents do not support automatic materialization.
Bulk materialization methods are supported, with varying complexity based on the specific Replication Agent capabilities.
Refer to the Replication Server Administration Guide for a general discussion of subscription materialization, and refer to the appropriate Replication Agent documentation for details regarding a particular Replication Agent and its materialization support.
