Replication Agent States

Replication Agent can be in any of several states:

These states are:

Admin – the instance has no connections established to other replication system components but 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. Some administrative commands are not allowed.
Replicating (Resynchronization) – the instance has been restarted and is resynchronizing the primary and replicate databases.
Replication Down – replication has stopped due to an error.

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.

Admin State

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.

In Admin state, the Replication Agent instance is running but 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.

Note: 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.

Replicating 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.

Note: 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. 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 or Replication Down state.

Replicating (Resynchronization) State

Replication Agent goes into the Replicating (Resynchronization) state after the resume resync command is invoked and completes successfully. This state indicates the Replication Agent is resynchronizing the primary and replicate databases. When Replication Agent has completed resynchronizing the primary and replicate databases, it returns to the Replicating state. For information on resynchronization, see the Replication Server Heterogeneous Replication Guide and the Replication Server Administration Guide. For information on the resume command, see the Replication Agent Reference Manual.

Replication Down State

A Replication Agent instance goes to the Replication Down state when:

An unrecoverable error occurs when the instance is in Replicating state.
A network failure or communication error causes a connection to the primary database or the primary Replication Server to be dropped.

When Replication Agent drops a connection, before it goes to Replication Down state, it first attempts to reestablish the connection using the values recorded in its configuration parameters for that connection. If it cannot reconnect, the Replication Agent instance goes to Replication Down state.

After the error has been resolved, Replication Agent may return to the Replicating state.

Note: Replication Agent behavior in the Replication Down state is the same as behavior in the Admin state, the only difference between the two states being that the Replication Down state is reached through a Replication Agent error.