Data Replication for Integrating Heterogeneous and Non-Heterogeneous Systems

As a new member of the SAP Community Network and longtime database expert, I am excited to share my knowledge as a member of SAP’s Global Database Center of Excellence in what will be a regular blog. 

My posts will be focused on the importance of data replication when integrating different applications and systems, an important theme that has relevance not only for those using SAP applications or SAP DBMSs, but also for users with applications or DBMSs from various other providers in the market.

In today’s post, I’d like to analyze a set of typical scenarios where systems integration and data replication is the key for business needs, as well as provide an overview of SAP Sybase Replication Server technology, which is a cornerstone of SAP’s data movement strategy.

Current architectures employ or require the following from their IT systems:

• Data distribution to allow accessing information in other systems
• Segregation of transaction processing and reporting systems to minimize impact to production OLTP systems
• Legacy systems where information needs to be available to other new systems
• Zero downtime for platform/DBMS migrations
• Zero downtime for platform/DBMS upgrades

While each of these cases pose their own unique data movement requirements, they all require a robust solution for real-time, low latency data movement – one that is capable of handling high data volumes with no performance impact to the source or target database system. SAP Sybase Replication Server is the best solution in the market with the required capabilities. Let’s take a look at some key aspects of the solution:

1. It is in the market for more than 20 years and is used by more than 2800 customers around the world.
2. Log based delta replication
3. Non intrusive in the source database so no performance impact because:
   • No replication triggers are needed on the source database.
   • SAP Sybase Replication Server is a separate process that can run on a different machine from source database.
4. High performance with near real time data replication (delay in most cases no more than a few seconds).
5. Transactional and sequential consistency at destination database.
6. Heterogeneous data replication

With all these features SAP Sybase Replication Server allows businesses to leverage existing applications across multiple locations and geographies, make decisions based on the today’s information while feeling secure in the stability and reliability of their distributed enterprise environment.

One of the most interesting use cases is the ability to do heterogeneous data replication between multiple database systems comprising databases from SAP as well as other companies.

In Table 1 you can find the supported origin DBMSs and in table 2  supported destination DBMSs:

               
On my next blogs,  I shall outline the SAP Sybase Replication Server architecture and sample configuration for a basic heterogeneous system replicating from Oracle 11g to ASE 15.7.