Materialization is the creation and activation of subscriptions and the copying of data from the primary database to the replicate database, thereby initializing the replicate database.
Before you can replicate data from a primary database, you must set up and populate each replicate database so that it is in a state consistent with that of the primary database.
Bulk materialization – the process of manually creating and activating a subscription and populating a replicate database using data unload and load utilities outside the control of the replication system.
Atomic materialization – the process of creating a subscription and populating a replicate database using Replication Server commands.
See the Replication Server Administration Guide for more information on subscription materialization methods.