Dave Andrews
Replication is becoming a popular technology among database vendors. Most current databases, however, require identical source and target file structures when they replicate.
Some databases can replicate to a limited number of other vendors' databases, but most of the time you have to purchase a software-gateway product. These products can cost $100,000 or more, and they don't typically support bidirectional replication. Praxis (Framingham, MA, (508) 270-6666; fax (508) 270-6688) has released a new product, called
OmniReplicator
.
"OmniReplicator's strength is its ability to replicate among multiple environments, and we have clients that are struggling with this on a day-to-day basis," explains Cathy Hirsh, vice president at
American Management Systems (Fairfax, VA), a systems development consultancy.
OmniReplicator supports asynchronous replication and a variety of replication strategies, including master/slave, bidirectional, broadcast, and store and forward. Praxis says its program works efficiently with transaction databases. The package can also "massage" data, performing the necessary conversions (e.g., currency and time/date) as it replicates data.
OmniReplicator currently supports a variety of OSes, but its support is not as strong for desktop databases. However, Praxis officials say the company plans on adding support for more databases, including desktop databases and possibly Lotus Notes, in 1996.
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Praxis's OmniReplicator supports bidirectional replication among the databases shown at left, and each database at left can update every database shown at right.
Swiss Army Knife for Data Replication
