DATA AND DB REPLICATION

THE NEED FOR REPLICATION TECHNOLOGY

In recent years, you discovered that by moving data from your
mainframe and distributing it across multiple sites, you minimized
communication costs and increased the availability of data that
resides locally. But by now you know that your distributed system
falls short when you run applications requiring frequent access to
data which now resides at multiple, remote sites.

Replication technology is a software solution that can resolve many
data access problems associated with such applications. Also,
carefully designed replication software can provide fault tolerance,
high availability, and disaster recovery mechanisms!

SOME BASIC QUESTIONS ABOUT REPLICATION

What is replication?
Data or database replication consists of technologies and
techniques for duplicating and maintaining synchronized copies of
data at multiple sites. In effect, a good replication solution allows
local access to all your data - even that which actually resides on
remote servers.

What are the major benefits?
Replication gives users speedy access to all the data they need, on
low-cost hardware at local sites. Since all data in effect resides
locally, data access is simplified, response time improves, and
communications charges are decreased further. The need for more
powerful servers can be eliminated, minimizing hardware costs.
Replication also can be used to accomplish gradual system
migration, move data to a hot-site backup location, and ensure
fault tolerance and high availability of data in your system.

It sounds like simply copying data!
What are the challenges?
Successful implementation is heavily dependent on your needs and
environment. In addition to creating "copies" of data, you must
move the "copies" and changes to the original data across your
network. And you must keep the "copies" synchronized at all times!
You also need to decide what granularity of replication you want,
how tightly your data must be synchronized, whether to partition
your data, the number of communication lines and bandwidth to
allocate, and define a clear set of conflict resolution rules. These
are just a few of the preliminary challenges you will face. There are
even greater challenges to achieve high availability or fault
tolerance as well.


UNIF/X - THE REPLICATION EXPERTS

At UNIF/X, our people have participated firsthand in the creation and
evolution of replication technology for distributed systems since 1990.
Even before products such as Sybase Replication Server, Oracle
Parallel Server, and HA for Sun were introduced, we reviewed and
analyzed alternative theoretical approaches to replication.

In 1991, our developers designed, developed, and implemented the first
software product providing replication, fault tolerance, high availability,
and network management tools for distributed database systems that was
marketed worldwide. Consisting of over 120,000 lines of code in C and
C++, this product was sold to multinational clients such as Moody's
Investor Service, Merrill Lynch, Shearson Lehman, Chemical Bank,
Salomon Brothers, and others* .

Subsequently, we have also designed and implemented both small and
large-scale custom replication solutions on various RDBMS's, hardware
platforms, and operating systems for a roster of distinguished customers.

More information about our experience is available upon request.
Sybase and Replication Server are trademarks of Sybase, Inc.
Oracle Parallel Server is a trademark of The Oracle Corporation
HA for Sun is a trademark of Sun Microsystems, Inc.

*This product was developed for and is owned by AFIC Technologies, Inc.

UNIF/X REPLICATION SERVICES

Because we have been involved with replication since the inception of this
technology, and have worked with an array of commercially available
replication products as well as small and large-scale custom replication
solutions, UNIF/X is in a unique position to compare, contrast, and
improve on the various approaches used by different vendors.

We can assist your organization in meeting the challenge of deploying
this mission-critical technology. Whether you are considering off-the-shelf
products, want to design your own replication technology, or just don't
know how to solve this problem yet, we can help:

  • Analyze how replication can be used optimally in your system
  • Compare alternative theoretical approaches for you
  • Evaluate commercially available replication products
  • Install any vendor's replication product, customize it, and train users
  • Design, develop, and implement custom replication solutions

   HOME   COMPANY INFO    SERVICES FIND US!

PARTNERS    |    UNIF/X IN THE PRESS    |    WEB/DB LINKS