Replication Agent 15.5 supports the enhancements made to the alter replication definition command in Replication Server 15.5, which simplify altering replication definitions by automatically coordinating the propagation of the new replication definition and data replication. To issue an alter replication definition request, you no longer need to wait for all the data associated with a primary table or stored procedure to be processed through the entire replication system.This makes coordinating database schema changes and replication definition changes more convenient, as there is no downtime for the primary database, and minimal or no downtime for the replicate database.
To support the Replication Server 15.5 changes, Replication Agent has been enhanced to:
Handle error codes returned from Replication Server when an invalid replication definition is issued.
Handle RSSD schema changes. Replication Agent supports RSSD of Replication Server version 15.5 or earlier.
Support the increased parameter size of rs_marker. The parameter size for the Replication Agent command ra_marker has also been increased to 16K for Oracle and 8000 for Microsoft SQL Server. See the Replication Agent 15.5 Reference Manual.
Provide SQL scripts for the new rs_send_repserver_cmd stored procedure, which allows you to execute replication definition change requests directly at the primary database.
Support Replication Server versions earlier than 15.5. When the length of parameter of stored procedure rs_marker is larger than 255 and if the Replication Server version is earlier than 15.5, Replication Agent records a warning message in the Replication Agent log file.
The new enhanced alter replication definition command is supported by these primary databases:
Oracle
Microsoft SQL Server
Limitations of this feature are:
This feature is not supported for IBM DB2 UDB, as this database does not support replication of SQL store procedures.
The altered table cannot include columns that have datatypes without direct ASE datatype mapping, and thus require some transformation by Replication Server. These datatypes include:
For Oracle – DATE, RAW, BINARY ROWID, MLSLABEL, REF, TIMESTAMP, TIMESTAMP WITH TZ, INTERVAL YEAR TO MONTH, INTERVAL DAY TO SECOND, BINARY UROWID, and TIMESTAMP WITH LOCAL TZ.
For Microsoft SQL Server – VACHAR (MAX), VARBINARY (MAX), and NVARCHAR (MAX).
See the Replication Agent 15.5 Primary Database Guide and the Replication Server 15.5 Heterogeneous Replication Guide.
