As the key to developing cost-effective distributed systems that meet critical business requirements, Sybase replication technology solves several major problems that are not addressed by a traditional distributed database architecture:
Corporate consolidation – Sybase replication technology lets you maintain a corporate overview of distributed operations that is very close to real time, even when distributed business units run on a variety of hardware and DBMS platforms.
Decentralization – Sybase replication technology allows you to locate data where it is needed, making distributed business units much less vulnerable to central computer or network downtime while reducing overall communication costs. It also allows bidirectional data sharing with a safe approach for replicating remote updates.
High availability – replication systems based on Sybase replication technology remain robust, despite typical hardware, software, and network failures, delivering applications with very high uptime at a reasonable cost.
Live decision support – replication systems based on Sybase replication technology can replicate an OLTP database, allowing analysts to run complex decision-support queries on data that is within seconds of real time, without affecting OLTP system performance.
Disaster recovery – Sybase replication technology lets you maintain a near-real-time “warm standby” database, to which applications can switch with virtually no downtime if the primary site fails.
Sybase offers three product lines that specifically support replication systems with heterogeneous or non-Sybase data servers, based on Sybase replication technology:
Replication Server
Replication Agent
DirectConnect
Replication Server is the centerpiece of Sybase’s advanced replication technology, and it incorporates several features specifically to support non-Sybase data servers in a Sybase replication system.
Replication Agents support Replication Server by providing a means to obtain replication data from non-Sybase primary databases. Replication Agents provide this support for DB2 Universal Database, Informix, Microsoft SQL Server, and Oracle data servers.
DirectConnect database gateways support Replication Server by providing access to a variety of non-Sybase databases, allowing them to function as replicate databases in a Sybase replication system.
