One month on from the release of Dbvisit Replicate CTO and Founder of Dbvisit Software, Arjen Visser shares some of the backstory on our newest product.
Replication software: who is using it and how can it be effective?
I see companies using Dbvisit Replicate for a number of reasons:
- Distributing data across offices/locations. They may have one source database that they want to distribute to remote offices, or have a need to share data with remote offices.
- Data warehousing, where ETL (extraction, transform and upload) is in play to extract data out of the source database and into the data warehouse. Using Change Data Capture (CDC) by mining the Oracle Logs is the most efficient way to detect and extract inserts and updates out of source data.
- Upgrading Oracle versions or migrating from one Oracle platform to another, e.g. Oracle on Windows to Oracle on Linux.
What are your keys to successful product development?
Successful software and ultimately product development is all about developing with the user experience in mind. My main considerations in developing Dbvisit Replicate were:
- Ensuring it was easy to use, configure and set up
- Making sure it provides solid and useful feedback when things are not going right, and that the software can guide the user in fixing whatever is wrong
- That it provided good guidance but still allowed for flexibility should the user wish to ‘wander off the path’.
- Ensuring that the product accommodated all of the different configuration options allowed by Oracle so our users did not lose any of the power and flexibility inherent to Oracle databases.
What prompted you to develop a Replication product?
Listening to our customers! We kept getting lots of enquiries from customers who wanted real time reporting and Oracle replication across different platforms.
What were some of the major challenges you faced in developing Dbvisit Replicate?
One of the biggest technical challenges around developing Dbvisit Replicate was building our own mining engine to extract the transactions out of the Oracle logs, putting the information together in the right order and turn them into SQL. Also ensuring that all the SQL are happening in the right order to guarantee transaction integrity. We figured it out!
What are some of the issues users have found since you launched Dbvisit Replicate?
All though we try to account for every Oracle configuration we can, by it’s nature replication is complex and there are configurations out there that we may not yet have accounted for. No doubt we will have to make changes to the software to accommodate them as they arise.
As with Dbvisit Standby we are very responsive when it comes to assisting customers and have been able to diagnose and resolve any issues very quickly.
What is your favourite feature in Dbvisit Replicate?
Real time replication progress updates which allow you to watch the replication as it happens in the Dbvisit Replicate console.
Is there still a place for DR software once someone has implemented Replicate?
Yes. They have very distinct functions and benefits: Dbvisit Replicate serves to replicate and distribute your data and Dbvisit Standby is about protecting your data. The great news for Standard Edition users is that Dbvisit products work together to provide the sharing AND complete protection of your data.
Is there anything else you’d like to add about Dbvisit Replicate?
I’m very excited about Dbvisit Replicate. Data replication is a very complicated animal (especially master to master) and it was a huge feat to pull off so I’m immensely pleased and proud of the team that we’ve been able to do it. I am also very excited that we can enable our users to replicate from Oracle to Oracle, Microsoft SQL Server and MySQL databases. It puts us in the unique postion of having two products that encompass the entire Oracle replication spectrum, from physical to logical replication. The possibilities this opens up for our primarily Standard Edition users is immense.
For more information on Dbvisit Replicate go to www.dbvisit.com.
