Appliances: what can replication do for you?In general, replication improves data availability and scalability without sacrificing performance, security and application usability. Replication can be used in many ways, solving many problems. Summarized here are a few of those possibilities.Not much details are given: these have to be recovered during the design phase of the implementation because typically each solution has it own set of points of interest and complexity.
Mobile applicationsBy using Frext as an asynchronous data replication tool, applications become always available, even when the network is down. Mobile applications are typically off line and using synchronization. Partitioning is an option provided by Frext for reducing network overhead. Typically, on the remote side there are many or even a large number databases involved which can be handled well by Frext.Mobile applications uses a master-remote model: remotes are fully dependent from the master, but the master is in no way dependent from any remote. Remotes can be recreated anytime from the master data set. Examples:
Server-to-server replicationIntegration of two or more databases on the same server or between different back end servers at the same or different location. Servers are always connected, but are treated as an mobile application, so off line. Examples:
Connecting servers can be done in several ways:
Application IntegrationFrext can facilitate the connection or integration between different information systems with each other (not restricted by Firebird) by providing a common interface. Frext is able to function as a front end (message consumer) or as back end (message producer); the other end does not have to be an instance of Frext/Firebird. Thus, Frext acts as an interface between different, heterogeneous servers or applications.Examples:
Data transformationWith Frext, it is easy to change (enhance) data on a field level as this is replicated from the sender to the receiver. This can be implemented in two ways:
Transaction log viewerFrext can be also used in more a technical way, i.e. for statistical analysis and auditing of database usage. Frext implements a pseudo transaction log (Firebird does not have a transaction log), publicly viewable thus facilitating these solutions. See architecture.For more information about application integration and data transformation, see Enterprise Information Patterns (Hohpe & Woolf). |