SQDR Update: Oracle Advanced Replication Support, Native 64-bit, Enhanced Change Data Notification, and more

StarQuest continually updates its products based upon agile project management principles, and also generates major releases from time to time. We are pleased to announce a major update of Data Replicator (SQDR), StarQuest’s real-time data replication and change data capture solution for your IBM DB2, Microsoft SQL Server and Oracle database systems. Version 4.5 of SQDR data replication software is available to all customers with a current maintenance agreement for no additional charge.

Highlights of V4.5 include:

• SQDR now supports Oracle 11g and Oracle 12c as an incremental replication source.
• A 64-bit version of SQDR is now available (32-bit SQDR will continue to be supported).
• Enhanced Change Data notifications allow you to push changes and drive business processes using an XML-formatted message.
• A streamlined installation process reduces the time required to install and configure SQDR to less than 30 minutes, down from two hours.
• SQDR includes IBM DB2 LUW V10.5 Express Edition. Express Edition is eligible for direct IBM Support and may be upgraded using IBM Fix Packs.
• SQL Server is no longer required for the control database used by SQDR. Now users may opt to use the bundled version of DB2 LUW that comes with SQDR.
• A selection of improvements including enhanced support for index and constraint replication for incremental replications, elimination of ODBC data sources and improvements in connection pooling.

Major enhancements include the following benefits:

• Oracle replication is based upon built-in log capture technology, providing a high performance, asynchronous mode of capturing changes and delivery to multiple destination databases. Log mining avoids the use of triggers or other high-overhead techniques to identify changed data.

• StarQuest now provides a native 64-bit version of SQDR that still features the same familiar and easy-to-use GUI interface. Performance may be enhanced as a result of using larger memory models for larger buffers and direct access to native OS calls.

• SQDR can be configured to invoke a user-supplied stored procedure to process Change Data information for purposes of auditing or “push” notifications. Notifications can be used to perform a business process task such as inserting a message into a message bus such as RabbitMQ, IBM WebSphere MQ, Microsoft Message Queuing (MSMQ), sending an email, or logging changes in a database table for auditing purposes.

• At the core of SQDR is a high performance staging system built around IBM DB2 LUW. The staging architecture used by SQDR provides a mechanism for accumulating and delivering committed transactions to multiple subscribers without any scaling overhead on the source DBMS (change data is “Captured once” and “Applied multiple times.”). The staging database is bundled with SQDR at no additional charge and may receive point updates directly from IBM.

• Using DB2 for the staging database also permits a self-contained SQDR deployment that does not require Microsoft SQL Server. Eliminating the use of SQL Server as a staging database reduces the footprint of the SQDR installation by 90% or more (50 MB vs. 500+) and means less complex administration by reducing the number of separate components.

If you are not yet a StarQuest SQDR customer and want to learn more, please visit our SQDR page or contact us for a demo.