Oracle GoldenGate 12c New Features Overview

GoldenGate 12c version  has many great features as compared to older versions. Below are some of the key new features of Oracle GoldenGate 12c that are worth mentioning

1) Integrated Delivery for the Oracle Database

Prior to 12c, to handle high pressure replication work you had to define many replicat processes. In 12c, A new lightweight Streaming API has been built by oracle exclusively for Oracle GoldenGate. This utility moves GoldenGate Delivery closer to the RDBMS engine.

This is a Unique feature which is considered next generation and high-speed data apply process. Internally this mechanism leverages the database parallel apply servers to create auto dependency aware parallel apply.

Note that Integrated Delivery is applicable for Oracle target databases only 12.1.0.1 and 11.2.0.4

Key Benefits of GoldenGate 12c Integrated Delivery:

•    Minimal changes to GoldenGate configuration
•    Single parameter file for all tables
•    Single process with minimal configuration to distribute load

In 12c, Integrated Delivery can be broadly broken down into two parts

A) Delivery

•  Reads the trail file
•  Constructs logical change records (LCRs)
•  Transmits LCRs to Oracle Database via the Lightweight Streaming API

B) Inbound Server (Database Apply Process)

•  Receiver: Reads LCRs
•  Preparer: Computes the dependencies between the transactions (primary key, unique indexes, foreign key) , group the transactions and sorting in dependency order.
• Coordinator: Coordinates transactions, maintains the order between applier processes.
• Appliers: Performs changes for assigned transactions, including conflict detection and error handing

2) Optimized for Oracle Database 12c

• Support now the 12c data types example Large Varchar of 32k.
• DDL capture is optimized further. It can now directly read from database redo logs
• Supports three part naming convention (catalog.schema.table)
• Reduces overhead by extracting changed data at the container level rather than at the individual databases. This means that memory/processes requirement is at the container level only
• Ease of administration with DBMS package for GoldenGate
• Additionally, GoldenGate 12c supports both cloud-based and on-premises hosted database systems. Supports both Unrestricted secured network and Restricted network access from on-premises and cloud through HTTP proxy / tunnel

3) Improved Ease of Use

A) DISCARDFILE: GoldenGate automatically creates discard file rather than having to manually create it during each installation as DBAs used to do prior to 12c

B) SHOWSYNTAX: New command that helps now in enhanced Debugging

• It has ability to view the SQL that Oracle GoldenGate is generating
• Aids developers in qualifying mappings and index usage for DML operatins.

C) WILDCARD: Ease of Configuration with Schema Wildcarding

•  Applications support wildcard schema and catalog
• Wildcard schema support is available for all databases

4) Coordinated Delivery for Non-Oracle Databases

For the Non-Oracle database, GoldenGate provides the High-Speed Apply Processes & Simplifies Setup and Management. You can have one replicate with multi-threaded process which is relatively  easy to handle. It simplifies a bit the deployments for Non-Oracle Databases.

Full Coordination Across Events Requiring Ordering;

• DDL
• Primary Key Updates
• EMI
• SQLEXEC.

Simplified Parameter File Management  and simpler error recovery. This further increases the ease of Use

5) Expanded Heterogeneity

GoldenGate 12c enhances further the support for New Databases and existing Supported Platforms. Various enhancement have been done for : MySQL, MS SQL Server, Sybase, Teradata, IBM DB2.  Also, various new versions for these databases are now supported.

6) Enhanced High Availability

This is one of the cool new feature.  Fast start FailOver(FSFO) is now possible for primary/standby system for Goldengate also. So as soon as your primary database failover to standby database an automated & transparent failover will occur for GoldenGate Components too. This means that your replication can continue without any manual intervention.

In the instance of a failover/switchover, Oracle GoldenGate processes are started on the standby during the role transition and insures that no data is lost during the failover/switchover.

7) Tighter Security

Previous releases of Oracle Golden Gate stored user details as either plain text or with light encrypted.  Golden Gate 12c includes integration with the Oracle Credential Store and Oracle Wallet provides great encryption facility . It also provides the ability to store and retrieve the key username and passwords using aliases.

A) Credential Store

•   Credential store is created during the set-up of Oracle GoldenGate
•    Usemames and passwords are stored as encrypted. Everything is access via an alias
•   A key is automatically generated for each trail file

B) Oracle Wallet

•    Provides the services to Oracle GoldenGate to manage and edit security credentials.
•    Use Wallet instead of ENCKEYS file
•    Common set of commands across all Oracle products

8) Downstream Capture

This is not exactly a new feature but this feature has been further enhanced in 12c.

Downstream capture mode can utilize Data Guard redo log transport to process transactions off-source.

If you select Real-Time Mining capabilties of GoldenGate to  Capture the transactions on Downstream / Remote Machines, major benefits are:

• Provides means to off-Ioad GoldenGate processing to downstream / remote machines.
• No chance of data loss by using the Data Guard Redo Iog transport mechanism to ship redo logs to a downstream / remote machine where Golden gate extract processes are installed.

9) Expanded Oracle Application and Technology Support

GoldenGate provides the methods to migrate to new Platforms and Database versions with extremely low downtime.

NOTE: It does not include Application Upgrades.

GoldenGate 12c had expanded Oracle Application and Technology Support

10) OUI Based Installation process

Finally GoldenGate, just like other Oracel software, can be installed using Oracle Universal Installer (OUI). Now in this release the OUI based installation takes care of some of the manual install process (like creating sub-directories) that DBA used to perform in earlier GoldenGate releases.