When a Replication Agent instance is running, it can be in one of two discrete states:
Admin – the instance has no connections established to other replication system components, but it is available to execute administrative commands, such as changing configuration parameters and maintaining the transaction log or the RASD. No replication processing occurs when the Replication Agent instance is in Admin state.
Replicating – the instance is performing its normal replication processing: scanning the transaction log, processing log records and change-set data, and sending LTL commands to the primary Replication Server. In Replicating state, some administrative commands are not allowed.
The default start-up state is Admin. The Replication Agent instance goes to Admin state automatically when no start-up state is specified.
The state of a Replication Agent instance can be changed by either:
An external event that occurs while the Replication Agent is processing replicated transactions (for example, a network error on the Replication Server connection), or
Operator intervention (for example, invoking a command that changes the Replication Agent state).
From the moment a state-changing event occurs until the Replication Agent instance is actually in the new state, the instance is said to be “in transition.” During state transition, some administrative commands are ignored.
A Replication Agent instance goes to Admin state when:
The instance is started in its default state.
The instance is started with the ra utility -admin option.
The Replication Agent quiesce or suspend command is invoked when Replication Agent is in Replicating state.
An unrecoverable error occurs when the instance is in Replicating state.
In Admin state, the Replication Agent instance is running, but it has no connection established to the primary Replication Server (or RSSD, if so configured) or the primary database.
You can perform most administrative tasks while the Replication Agent instance is in Admin state, including changing the value of any Replication Agent configuration parameter.
In Admin state, the instance can open a connection to
the primary database, if necessary, to process a command that requests
results from the primary database.
A Replication Agent instance may go to Admin state from Replicating state when a network failure or communication error causes its connection to the primary database or the primary Replication Server to be dropped.
When Replication Agent drops a connection, before it goes to Admin state, it first attempts to re-establish the connection using the values recorded in its configuration parameters for that connection. If it cannot reconnect, the Replication Agent instance goes to Admin state.
A Replication Agent instance goes to Replicating state when:
The instance is started with the ra utility -replicate option.
The Replication Agent resume command is invoked when Replication Agent is in Admin state.
The Replication Agent instance goes to the Replicating state
only if a connection for the primary database has been created in
the primary Replication Server. For more information on creating
the primary database connection in Replication Server, see the Replication
Agent Primary Database Guide.
In Replicating state, the Replication Agent instance maintains a connection to the primary database and to the primary Replication Server (and RSSD, if so configured), and its Log Reader component scans the transaction log for transactions to replicate.
If the Replication Agent instance has finished processing all of the records in the transaction log, its state continues to appear as Replicating. When the Replication Agent instance reaches the end of the log:
The Log Reader component log-scanning process “sleeps” according to the values of the scan_sleep_increment and scan_sleep_max configuration parameters.
After the Log Transfer Interface (LTI) component finishes processing all of the change sets it received from the Log Reader and sending all of the LTL to the Replication Server, no replication throughput occurs until new replicated transactions appear in the log and the Log Reader scans them.
The Replication Agent instance remains in Replicating state, unless some other event causes it to go to Admin state.
