About manual replication

When setting up replication to synchronize data across multiple sites, the replication procees is typically configured to synchronize data as an automated operation. This is often performed at regularly scheduled intervals, as a background task in Factory Track TaskMan. More recently, however, replication is increasingly being used for other purposes, such as pushing data to the Data Lake and integrating with other applications by means of ION APIs.

Caution:

Do NOT, unless specifically directed by Infor Customer Support, perform manual replication on the Site Administration category. Doing so can have adverse effects on the site/entity hierarchy.

Original reasons for manual replication

Originally, manual replication was performed only for a delayed replication process, or to perform transactional replication between two sites. This was done to manually override the automatic replication process.

Normally, when you set up replication, what the generated triggers respond to is net change somewhere in the data. This means that, if you update a record or you add a new record, the change is replicated automatically to other sites in your system. However, the replication process does not push all the data to the replication sites, only the changed data.

This means that, when you first set up a replication operation, or—for whatever reason—you wiped out all of the data on the target site, you might want to perform a manual push of the replication data.

Using manual replication for the Data Lake

More recently, the replication process is being used to push data out to the Data Lake, mostly in cases where a customer is first being set up to use the Data Lake. The process works essentially the same way: Triggers are generated on the tables involved, and that reflects net change to be replicated.

When a customer is first being set up to use the Data Lake, of course, all the data currently in their system is a change from what is in the Data Lake. That means that all data must be pushed to the Data Lake before they can start using it.

In some cases, it might be that their data in the Data Lake, for some reason, has been corrupted or wiped out. Or, after setting up to work with the Data Lake, they might have restored their database to some previous baseline, and that is what they want to have available from the Data Lake. In such cases, they need to push their data again to the Data Lake.

These are situations in which they would want to use the manual replication process.

Using manual replication for integration with other applications via ION API

Increasingly, Factory Track-based replication is being used to integrate with external applications in various ways, especially using ION API connections. One such example of this usage is the integration of an on-premises installation of Factory Track with Data Lake (see Setup to integrate from "on-premises" to MTC Data Lake). Other, similar uses are possible. For help in devising such a setup, contact your Customer Support representative.