Discovering SharePlex for Oracle

By Mouhamadou Diaw

Nowadays, replicating data is very important. Many tools exist in the market (Goldengate, Dbvisit …). In this article we talk about a Dell Product tool that can be used for data replication: SharePlex. The goal is to show how it is easy to setup a SharePlex environment for replicating data.
After installing the software we will replicate scott schema to a target database into a new schema named scott_str1

We present below the environment we use

1- Installation on both source and target

The first step is to install the SharePlex software, the downlod page is  https://www.quest.com/products/shareplex/.
For the intallation we need two directories on both source and target servers:

Product directory: stores programs and libraries
Variable-data directory: stores queues, log files and other components files

Note: For some steps we will only show outputs for the source

Now Let’s unzip the downloded file and after execute the .tpm resulting file on both source and target

Wow SharePlex installation is finished.

 2- Database preparation

The initial load on the target must me done. Datapump may help for this. Just export data from the source and import it on the target.

Minimal supplemental logging must be set before you activate the SharePlex replication configuration. In addition, SharePlex recommends that both primary key and unique key supplemental logging be set. In this article we will only activate minimal supplemental logging.

SharePlex will create a user  in the database so it is recommended to create dedicated tablespaces for this user

3-  Define a new variable-data directory on both source and target

When configuring a replication configuration, it is recommended to use different variable-data directory other than the one mentioned during the installation. The main reason is that by doing that we will have one working directory for each replication. What we need is just to create a new directory and to copy the contents of the default variable-data directory in the new one. Remark the naming for the new var directory  (dbname_shareplexverion_oracleversion_port). Of course feel free for your naming. But it is useful to adopt a naming that can help for identifying the replication as we can have many configurations in the same server

4- Configure SharePlex on both source and target

To configure SharePlex we have to run the ora_setup file. Before launching the ora_setup file, we  set some variables. Just note that we can use a different port than the one we specified in the installation process The only requirement is that ports should have same value on both source and target

Run also ora_setup on the target. We only show variables on target

5- Starting SharePlex processes on both source and target

Now we are ready to start SharePlex processes. The $SP_HOME/bin/sp_cop executable is used. Just remark the option –u followed by a naming variable. Not mandatory but can help for alerting setup or for locating our processes.

Starting on the source side

Starting on the target side

6- Configuring Replication

To configure data replication, we need to create a configuration file on the source. There is already a template (ORA_config)  for the configuration in the $SP_SYS_VARDIR/config directory.

We just have to create a configuration file based on this template. Below our config file

When using wildcarded names in the configuration file, the keyword expand is mandatory. Without this required keyword, the wildcard characters are assumed to be part of an explicit object name, and no wildcard expansion is performed.
Once the configuration created we verify it and then activate it. Activating the configuration file will start the replication. The sp_ctrl utility is used to manage SharePlex

We can display the list of our configuration files

Let’s verify the configuration file syntax

The last step is to activate the config file

We can validate the replication by checking the running processes with the command show.
From the Source: Capture, Read and Export processes should be running

From the Target : Import and Post processes should be running

Now we can see that if we insert new rows in the source, they are replicated in the target

Conclusion :

In this article we shown how easy it is to setup data replication with SharePlex.

Ref: Dell Official documentation