Product Management and Development have been quite busy enhancing the Shadowbase feature set...
- Zero-Downtime Migrations (ZDM) to Eliminate Planned Downtime and Eliminate Business Risk
We made a number of enhancements to the core Shadowbase replication suite to aid in performing system, site, operating system version, database, or application version upgrades or migrations without sustaining any application downtime (i.e., RTO → 0). This task is especially tricky when the application database is massive, the application transaction rates are massive, and/or when performing a heterogeneous upgrade of the application environment. Click here to view a case study that satisfied all three of these goals and to read about how AOL migrated its AIM messaging login/authentication processing to a new platform without any application outage.
- Full Base24 Replication Support
We are pleased to report that after a thorough evaluation and competition between the available replication options, a large bank in Canada chose Shadowbase for its Base24 business continuity replication. We are in the process of completing our Base24 Shadowbase enhancements for both uni-directional (active/passive and active/almost active) as well as bi-directional (active/active) support, and should have those completed by the fall timeframe. If Base24 replication is important to you, and you are interested in exploring the options available that are provided by Shadowbase, please contact us using the link below to discuss your needs.
- SOLV ETL
The Shadowbase Online Loading facility (SOLV) was enhanced to provide snap-shot style loading, useful for classic extract, transfer, and load (ETL) types of scenarios. The key to snap-shot loading is the ability to take a consistent image of the source database as it is updated and apply it to the target. SOLV ETL has a number of modes to facilitate this approach, and supports both audited, as well as non-audited, source files and tables.
- Synchronous Replication
We are working on a new synchronous version of Shadowbase for those demanding customer environments that want zero data loss in the event of node failure (RPO → 0) and/or who want to avoid data collisions when running in an active/active route requests anywhere environment. We are pleased to report that we are working with HP on testing the soon-to-be-released HP Synchronous Replication Gateway product that facilitates Shadowbase’s offering in this space.
Synchronous replication is a sophisticated technology that offers the most advanced continuous processing business continuity architectures achievable. At this time, we are actively seeking interested parties to discuss the details of this technology, and in particular, to discuss the customer's application needs in this area. If you are interested in learning more about this technology, please contact us using the link below to discuss your needs.
Speaking with our customers and potential customers is our best approach for understanding where we need to take the Shadowbase product suite to meet your current and upcoming needs. If any of these new features are of interest to you, or you want to discuss your specific needs with us, please contact Dick Davis, our Shadowbase Sales Manager, for more information and to arrange a discussion.
Product Development is enhancing the Shadowbase feature set and improving efficiency on a variety of fronts:
- New versions of Shadowbase are available that support DB2 and MySQL target databases, as well as the latest versions of Oracle, Sybase, and SQL Server databases. In addition, we ported our patent-pending statement caching technology in order to support a myriad of ODBC targets. (Please talk to us about your replication target database needs in this area.)
- We are adding a target-side disk queuing option to Shadowbase NonStop replication, which allows the data to be delivered to the target environment and safe-stored even when the target database is offline. (This option has been available in our Open Server offering for quite some time.) We are also dramatically expanding the breadth and scope of replication statistical information that can be captured and archived, particularly in the detailed file I/O counters and replication lag and latency areas. Extensive new features will enhance Shadowbase’s manageability for multiple/independent replication environments on the same nodes, and should be completed in the fall timeframe.
- We added a consumptive user exit capability to our Open Server product. This capability facilitates efficient replay of I/O events when the customer’s user exits will consume the event (i.e., Shadowbase is not replicating the event into a target database, rather the customer’s user exit code is consuming the event, perhaps via feeding a middleware product or issuing the I/O itself against a non-standard, non-supported target database).
- We have added extended support for the number and types of DDL commands that Shadowbase replicates, including Enscribe file create, purge, and alter events.
- Our entire manual set has received a detailed technical review/overhaul. Contact us if you need an updated copy of the documentation.
Please contact Dick Davis, our Shadowbase Sales Manager, to learn more about any of our products or services.