Database integrity is a major concern of all database users and is compounded when replication is in use, since two or more databases must remain identical. OpenEdge Replication achieves database integrity by performing synchronization. Synchronization ensures that the source database and the target database are identical.

Synchronization is performed by the OpenEdge Replication server and the OpenEdge Replication agent during database startup, replication startup, and failure recovery processing.

When a source database is started, various operations are performed by the database manager to guarantee database resiliency. Some of the operations change the database, and the database changes must be replicated to any and all target databases. During the startup synchronization process, all database activity that might have occurred during database startup is replicated to the target database.

Note: You can force the source database to synchronize explicitly with the target databases during a source broker shutdown. This means that a replication target database can transistion to become a replication source database without concern for loss of transactions not replicated to the target. For details, see Enforce source and target database synchronization during shutdown.