Initializing Replication Agent

Initialize a Replication Agent instance.

Prerequisites

See the Replication Agent Primary Database Guide to verify that the required setup tasks have been performed for your primary database.

Task

Log in to the Replication Agent administration port.
To define a prefix that uniquely identifies the Replication Agent transaction log you are creating, use:
```
ra_config ra_admin_instance_prefix, string
```
where string is a character string of one to three characters that is used as a prefix for all names of the Replication Agent objects created in the primary database.

Note: The default value of the ra_admin_instance_prefix parameter is ra_. Unless this string poses a conflict with existing database object names in your primary database, use the default value.
Initialize the Replication Agent:
```
ra_admin init
```
When you invoke the ra_admin command with the init option, Replication Agent:
- Checks the primary database for compatible settings.
- Generates a SQL script that is run in the primary database. This script creates the Replication Agent objects in the primary database.
For Replication Agents that use an RASD, the RASD is initialized with information from the primary database.

Note: Replication Agent must be initialized before any objects can be marked for replication in the primary database.
To verify that the Replication Agent was initialized and that its objects were created in the primary database, enter:
```
ra_admin
```
When you invoke the ra_admin command with no options, Replication Agent returns a list of the objects in the primary database, if initialization completed successfully. If no information is returned, Replication Agent has not been initialized, and none of its objects exist in the primary database.

When the Replication Agent is initialized and both primary database and Replication Server connections are defined correctly, you can put the Replication Agent instance in Replicating state.