Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) GoldenGate is a managed service providing a real-time data mesh platform, which uses replication to keep data highly available, and enabling real-time analysis.
$250
Per License
SharePlex
Score 10.0 out of 10
N/A
SharePlex from Quest Software is a data replication software offering near real-time replication and supporting a wide variety of databases.
Oracle [GoldenGate] is well suited for data replication where real-time results are important, such as data reporting. There is potential to have the users query the replicated database, which can have separate resources set up to be compressed or using lower performing or cheaper resources. As mentioned, columns with LOBs can become a headache, as they will need to be synchronized in their own group many times. Tables containing data in CHAR, VARCHAR, NUMBER, DATE, or other non-LOB columns, however, are able to be replicated quite seamlessly. [Oracle GoldenGate] does provide a way to review errors that are encountered, so that is a positive if their is scrutiny around data integrity.
SharePlex is best suited for replicating relatively small but steady streams of data, instead of huge amounts of data surge. Keep in mind that it relies on database logs (redo logs in Oracle) to replicate data in the form of "messages", and therefore it is mandatory to put the database in forced logging mode - that may be a prohibiting factor in some situations.
Documentation: There are some areas where the documentation is weak or dated. In particular, running SharePlex on RAC is a more involved process than the implementation guides would have you believe. When reaching out for assistance, the answer from Dell (a few years ago) was to engage their consulting team.
Built in scripts/agents: SharePlex comes with a handful of monitoring and management scripts that can be run as cron jobs. Unfortunately, these scripts are primitive and rigid, requiring the user to hard-code values into the script body and limiting their usefulness when you're running multiple replication streams. Some of the methods and dependencies are heavy. We ended up writing custom scripts that do what we need but it would be helpful if there were greater functionality and flexibility out of the box.
Compared to other tools, there is not as wide (or at least as active) a user presence. If you're having difficulties you may have to engage a consultant since it's less likely that you'll find an answer in a forum or blog post.
Once set up, it's very easy to use and keep running, it's getting to that point that can make it cumbersome to some. Also, depending on the data that you want to replicate, the configuration files can become quite cumbersome to maintain. Learning curve can be high for some who are not as experienced with databases and transactions.
Oracle Support for Oracle GoldenGate has been quite responsive and quite helpful in the few situations where we've needed it. Furthermore, the documentation on Oracle GoldenGate is so good that we often do not need to contact support with issues as the fix is already documented and able to be run by us without needing to open a ticket.
Support is very responsive. They take ownership of the problems and see them through to the finish. When a bug is found they work towards developing testing and making the fix available to us to solve the problem.
We've had Oracle consultants come as well for training days to talk about new features, parts of Oracle GoldenGate we may not be using and things of that nature. The consultants they send are great as they're very knowledgeable about all things Oracle GoldenGate and great resources for any questions or concerns you may have with the product.
We used Oracle University for our Oracle Golden Gate Training and it was top notch. We were able to turn our whole DBA team to Oracle GoldenGate newbies to Oracle GoldenGate troubleshooting experts in a matter of a few days, while this obviously did not come cheap, the company felt that it was worth the investment.
If Oracle GoldenGate is new to your organization, expose as many DBAs as possible to it. Having your whole team fluent in it will overcome early operational hurdles and allow it to more quickly become an accepted and supported part of your supported platform for your team that will enable the business to use it to its fullest.
Oracle is tightly integrated with Oracle Exadata and is a better fit for using Oracle databases.Both products support heterogeneous databases but using Exadata, it just seemed to make better sense to use the Oracle GoldenGate product. We also take advantage of the Oracle GoldenGate Veridata product to compare datasets and make sure they are still in sync.
SharePlex was a clear winner in comparison to its competitors. It beats GoldenGate on price, providing equivalent features and performance at a fraction of the price and without the need to license costly Oracle features at the database level. DB Visit was a strong contender for us as well and it is an excellent product I would also recommend, but it did not have quite enough of a user and community presence and penetration for our management to feel comfortable with.
Have never had any issues with scaling Oracle GoldenGate itself, however Oracle GoldenGate Monitor does have scaling issues, but with Oracle GoldenGate now able to be monitored by Oracle Enterprise Manager, this is no longer an issue, in my opinion.
Oracle GoldenGate guarantees our standing-by database in passive data center, is always in "pre-warmed" status, as the data is always in-sync with the master database in our active data center. At any time, the standing-by database can kick in in case the active DC encounters the serious issue. This significantly increases the IT application's high availability and promise to "business as usual".
