ASE Replicator objects are metadata entities that define the relationships between primary and replicate databases, and how data is replicated.
ASE Replicator objects include:
Database connections – identify a specific database on a specific database server. There are two types of database connections: primary and replicate.
Publications and subscriptions – act as containers to organize primary or replicate articles in a database. Publications organize the primary articles in a primary database; subscriptions organize the replicate articles in a replicate database.
Articles – identify the individual database objects (tables or stored procedures) involved in replication. Primary articles identify the published objects in the primary database. Replicate articles subscribe to primary articles, and identify the subscribing objects in the replicate database.
Fields – identify the objects within an article, that is, the columns in a table or the input parameters passed to a stored procedure. Fields allow a subset of a primary object to be published, and a subset of a primary article to be subscribed to.
ASE Replicator objects are stored in the Distribution Database.
Figure 1-4 illustrates the hierarchical relationships between ASE Replicator objects.
Figure 1-4: ASE Replicator object hierarchy
The primary database connection contains publications, which in turn contain primary articles, and those in turn contain fields.
The replicate database connection contains subscriptions, which in turn contain replicate articles, and those in turn contain fields.
There is also dependency between primary and replicate objects. As shown in Figure 1-5, object dependencies are not only hierarchical, but also horizontal between primary and replicate objects at the same level.
On the primary side, all object dependencies are hierarchical, but on the replicate side, object dependencies are both hierarchical (dependent on the next-higher-level replicate object), and horizontal (dependent on the same-level primary object).
Figure 1-5: ASE Replicator object dependency
