Replicating data between heterogeneous data systems

• US 20080027987A1
• Filed: 07/31/2006
• Published: 01/31/2008
• Est. Priority Date: 07/31/2006
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Oracle International Corporation (Oracle Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Oracle International Corporation (Oracle Corporation)
• Inventors: Shodhan, Neeraj, Lakshminath, Anand, Arora, Nimar, Wong, Lik, Wang, Byron, Lu, Edwina, Hoang, Thuvan
• Granted Patent: US 7,668,878 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 707/104.1
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/184 implemented as replicated file system
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/258 Data format conversion from or to a database
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/27 Replication, distribution or synchronisation of data between databases or within a distributed database system; Distributed database system architectures therefor

Abstract

A method and apparatus for replicating data between heterogeneous databases is provided. Data is replicated between two heterogeneous databases with the use of a volatile storage queue, enabling the rapid replication of data across databases provided by different vendors or operating on different platforms. According to one embodiment, an in-memory queue is used to queue change operations to be performed on a target data repository. The change operations may be operations that were applied to a source data repository. An apply process retrieves the change operations from in-memory queue and commits the change operations to persistent storage. When the change operations have been committed, the apply process notifies the source platform that the particular change operation has been stored.

Claims

1. A method comprising performing a machine-executed operation involving instructions, wherein the machine-executed operation is at least one of:

A) sending said instructions over transmission media;

B) receiving said instructions over transmission media;

C) storing said instructions onto a machine-readable storage medium; and

D) executing the instructions;

wherein said instructions are instructions which, when executed by one or more processors, cause the one or more processors to perform the steps of;

retrieving, from a volatile storage queue, first data that represents an operation that has been performed on a source data repository, wherein the first data includes an operation sequence identifier;

performing the operation on a target data repository; and

in response to performing the operation on the target data repository, sending, to a process that tracks changes on the source data repository, an indication that the operation has been performed on the target data repository, wherein the indication includes the operation sequence identifier.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein the instructions further cause the one or more processors to perform the additional step of receiving the first data in response to a change occurring on a source data repository

3. The method of claim 1, wherein the process that tracks changes on the source data repository associates the operation sequence identifier with the first data.

4. The method of claim 1, wherein the instructions further cause the one or more processors to perform the additional step of:

receiving the first data in response to a change occurring on the source data repository,

converting the first data into a native format; and

enqueing the first data in the volatile storage queue.

5. The method of claim 4, wherein the instructions further cause the one or more processors to perform the additional step of:

in response to enqueing the first data in the volatile storage queue, storing the operation sequence identifier of the first data in memory.

6. The method of claim 5, wherein the instructions further cause the one or more processors to perform the additional steps of:

receiving second data, wherein the second data includes a second operation sequence identifier;

examining the operation sequence identifier of the first data in memory

determining that the operation sequence identifier of the first data occurs after the operation sequence identifier for the second data; and

discarding the second data.

7. The method of claim 1, wherein the volatile storage queue is an in-memory queue.

8. The method of claim 1, wherein said source data repository is a source file system and wherein said target data repository is a target file system.

9. The method of claim 8, wherein said first data represents one or more changes performed on the source file system.

10. The method of claim 1, wherein the instructions further cause the one or more processors to perform the additional step of:

in response to performing the operation against the target data repository, removing the first data from the volatile storage queue;

11. The method of claim 1, wherein the instructions further cause the one or more processors to perform the additional step of:

in response to performing the operation against the target data repository, storing the operation sequence identifier of the first data in persistent storage.

12. The method of claim 11, wherein the instructions further cause the one or more processors to perform the additional steps of:

retrieving the operation sequence identifier of the first data from persistent storage;

determining that the operation represented by the first data has been performed against the target data repository; and

discarding any operations represented by data with an operation sequence identifier occurring before the operation sequence identifier of the first data.

13. The method of claim 1, wherein the volatile storage queue comprises a plurality of data representing operations to be performed against the target data repository.

14. The method of claim 6, wherein each data in the volatile storage queue contains an operation sequence identifier.

15. The method of claim 1, wherein the instructions further cause the one or more processors to perform the additional steps of:

receiving, at the source data repository, the indication that the operation has been performed against the target data repository;

determining, at the source data repository, the operation identifier associated with the first data; and

purging the first data from the source data repository.