Overview of Heterogeneous Datatype Support

If you are replicating information between SAP ASEs, datatype translations are normally unnecessary. However, you can use HDS to perform datatype translations when datatypes differ in the primary and replicate databases.

You can use HDS capabilities when replicating between:

SAP ASE databases – one SAP ASE datatype to another SAP ASE datatype
Like non-SAP databases – for example, DB2 TIMESTAMP to DB2 DATE
Heterogeneous non-SAP databases – Oracle to DB2, for example
SAP ASE and non-SAP databases – SAP ASE to Oracle, for example

HDS handles incompatibilities between the datatypes of the primary data server and the replicate data server. In general, these incompatibilities are of four types:

Incompatible ranges – for example, the range of acceptable dates for SAP datetime is January 1, 1753 through December 31, 9999. Another data server, however, may only allow dates from January 1, 0001 through December 31, 9999.
Incompatible formatting – for example, the primary data server date format is “CCYY-MM-DD,” but the replicate data server requires a date format of “MM/DD/CCYY.”
Incompatible length – for example, the primary table may have a column with a character length of 10, but the column in the replicate table has a length of 15.
Incompatible delimiters – for example, SAP delimits binary data with an “0x” prefix, whereas another data server may surround binary data with single quotation marks.

The Replication Agent for each data server delivers replicate values to SAP Replication Server in a datatype format that SAP Replication Server understands, which includes the literal value, delimiter information, and other datatype attributes. SAP Replication Server handles the value as its base datatype—one of the native SAP Replication Server datatypes described in the Reference Manual.

You can implement datatype translations in two ways:

Class-level translations – translate all instances of a datatype for a particular connection.

Create a connection specifying a connection profile for your non-SAP ASE database. The connection profile includes the class-level translation. See create connection using profile in the Reference Manual.
Column-level translations – translate all instances of a column described by a table replication definition.

Use the map to clause for column-level translations.