Oracle GoldenGate
Oracle GoldenGate is a real-time data replication and change data capture platform spanning Oracle and non-Oracle databases, NoSQL stores, warehouses, and messaging systems, available self-managed or as a managed OCI service.
LicenseCommercial
DeploymentSelf-hostedManaged
PricingFreeSubscription
Operational complexityHigh
WorkloadStreamingBatch
Use it when
- The estate is large and heterogeneous: Oracle, SQL Server, Db2 to z/OS, Sybase, MongoDB, and more on one side; Snowflake, Databricks, Redshift, Fabric, and Kafka on the other.
- Zero-downtime migration or cross-datacenter replication is the job; this has been the enterprise default for decades.
- Exactly-once apply and DDL replication are hard requirements; checkpoint tables and SCHEMATRANDATA handle both.
- Mainframe sources are in scope; almost nothing else here reaches them.
Think twice when
- The team is small or the source list is short; Extract, Distribution, and Replicat under a Service Manager is High-complexity operations, and lighter tools cover Postgres or MySQL alone.
- Licensing must be simple; per-processor licenses self-managed or OCPU-hours on OCI are enterprise procurement, not self-serve.
- The center of gravity is another cloud; OCI GoldenGate is the managed path, elsewhere it is self-managed.
How it runs
Extract processes read source logs (ARCHIVELOG, force logging, and supplemental logging on Oracle), Distribution moves trails, Replicat applies them, all under a Service Manager, self-managed anywhere or fully managed on OCI. GoldenGate Free covers databases up to 20 GB with the full feature set.
Details
CompareHow Oracle GoldenGate answers the questions Change Data Capture turns on.
Change Data Capture
| How it works | |
| Initial snapshot | Initial load runs alongside capture |
| End-to-end lag | Near real-time; lag reported per Extract and Replicat process |
| Delivery guarantee | Exactly-once: checkpoint table applies each transaction once |
| Schema drift | DDL replication including ALTER TABLE; SCHEMATRANDATA keeps it logged |
| Running it | |
| What you run | Extract, Distribution and Replicat processes under a Service Manager |
| Connections | |
| Sources | Oracle, PostgreSQL, MySQL, SQL Server, Db2, Sybase, MongoDB and more |
| Source requirements | ARCHIVELOG, force logging, supplemental logging per schema on Oracle |
| Transformations | COLMAP column mapping, FILTER and WHERE, SQLEXEC procedures |
| Destinations | Databases, Snowflake, Databricks, Redshift, Fabric, Kafka |
| Cost | |
| Billing unit | Per-processor licence self-managed; OCPU-hours on OCI GoldenGate |
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