Relocate Goldengate Processes to Other Node with agctl

Oracle Grid Infrastructure Agents can be used to manage Oracle Goldengate through Oracle GI. agctl is the utility to add, modify and relocate the goldengate. These Oracle GI agents can also be used with other products like weblogic, mysql etc. 

Installation of Oracle GoldenGate on RedHat Linux AS 4

I am going to install and configure standard GoldenGate configuration in which there is on Extract Group on the source machine, which sends the data to be replicated to the trail on the target system through normal network. On target system, the Replicat process consumes the data from the trail.

I am using 32-bit Oracle 10gR2 on both source and the target systems and the operating system is 32-bit Redhat Linux AS 4. I have created sourcedb on sourcemachine and targetdb on targetmachine. I have made sure that I can access both databases from both machines through SQLPLUS.

The Oracle GoldenGate was downloaded from here.

Then a folden 'ggs' was created in ORACLE_HOME and it is the directory where the GoldenGate will be installed, I added the path '$ORACLE_HOME/ggs' to the shared library enviornment variable LD_LIBRARY_PATH.

I opened up the terminal window, made sure that the ORACLE_HOME, ORACLE_SID, and LD_LIBRARY_PATH variables are set and then copied the downloaded the zip GoldenGate software file to ORACLE_HOME/ggs and unzipped it there.

It produced a TAR file. I untarred it by doing:

$ tar -xvof

Then I changed directories to the GoldenGate directory and started GoldenGate by doing:

$ ggsci

GGSCI> CREATE SUBDIRS

GGSCI> START MANAGER

GGSCI> EDIT PARAMS MGR

It will open a parameter file for the manager process in the vi editor, insert following line in the file and save and quit:

PORT 7809

:wq

GGSCI> STOP MANAGER

GGSCI> START MANAGER

I installed Oracle GoldenGate and configured the Manager process on both source and the target systems.

Now I will create Extract Group on the Source system. I am using the SCOTT SCHEMA and replicating the table 'dept':

ADD EXTRACT ext, TRANLOG, BEGIN

Then specify the remote trail on the host:

ADD RMTTRAIL rmt, EXTRACT ext

Now create the parameter file for the EXTRACT Group by doing:

GGSCI> EDIT PARAM ext

It will open up a vi editor:

EXTRACT ext
sourcedb, scott, tiger
RMTHOST targetmachine, MGRPORT 7809
RMTTRAIL rmt
TABLE scott.dept;

This completes the configuration at the source system.

Now move on to the target system.

Make sure to install GoldenGate on target machine and configure the MANAGER process as was done on the source machine.

First create a checkpoint table on target system. I am creating it in the scott schema wit name'CSNTAB;.

GGSCI> EDIT PARAMS ./GLOBALS

It will open up a vi editor. Enter:

CHECKPOINTTABLE scott.CSNTAB

save and quit.

GGSCI> DBLOGIN targetdb, scott, tiger

GGSCI> ADD CHECKPOINTTABLE SCOTT.CSNTAB

Then create a REPLICAT GROUP:

GGSCI> ADD REPLICAT rep, EXTTRAIL rmt, BEGIN

Then create a parameter file for Replicat:

GGSCI> EDIT PARAM rep

It will open up a vi editor, Enter:

REPLICAT rep
SOURCEDEFS ASSUMETARGETDEFS
TARGETDB targetdb, scott, tiger
MAP scott.dept, TARGET scott.dept;

Enter and commit a row in dept table of sourcedb and then verify that it gets replicated to the targetdb's dept table of scott schema.

Why I am Interested in Oracle GoldenGate

Without any marketing hype and without any sales talk, I am already hooked to the Oracle GoldenGate. In this age, when the prices of gold are breaking all the records, it's so enriching to have a all-gold gate.

When you have 10 SQLSERVER databases, 20 MYSQL Databases, and 30 Oracle OLTP databases and 5 Oracle Datawarehouses and many XML data sources, and a small of team of DBAs have to manage the data flow between these disparate data sources.

In this sort of environment, challenges are simply gigantic. Integrity of information, freshness across the databases, agile response, data mappings, data volatility, Information lifecycle management makes information flow in any direction a titanic task.

It was not so easy to manage such kind of environ through naive replication and even Streams were a hassle. With Oracle Golden Gate, all the above challenges seem to be addressed out of the box, and they say that this is a mature technology with proven track record.

Can't wait to try it out, and then have it at my place.