Replication Import Strategies

Replication strategies enable you to import objects when there are conflicts between names in a replication file and a server. There are two strategies:

Import Strategy: specifies how conflicts between objects are resolved.
Properties Merge Strategy: specifies how conflicts between Property Sheets and Property Sheet Definitions are merged. This strategy was previously called Merge Strategy and its functionality is the same.

Import replication can be:

• Object ID based

• Object name and ID based

The replication strategy defines how two objects from a server and replication file are matched.

Object ID based replication

This is the legacy replication import strategy. It matches two objects based on their IDs and considers them to be identical if the IDs match. Allows mainly master-slave replication scenarios.

Object name and ID based replication

Tip: Use as the default.

This strategy matches two objects based on ID and name using this sequence:

Uses the ID based import strategy (see above).
If that fails, finds two matching objects with different IDs but identical names. The two objects are treated as a match.
If there are no matching objects, creates a new object on the server.

This strategy works as follows:

When a versioned entity is imported the server remembers its path and version number and does not import it again.
When a server imports an object matched by name, all versions that were not previously imported are imported as the latest version, maintaining the order from the replication file. For example, a server has app1 with id1 and one version of the properties. The server imports app1 with id2 with two versions of the properties. The properties for app1 look like this:
- app1, id1, version 1 properties (version 1 on the server)
- app1, id2, version 1 properties (version 2 on the server)
- app1, id2, version 2 properties (version 3 on the server, the latest version)

The table below explains how name conflicts are resolved.

Example	Server		Replication		Result		Description
	ID	Name	ID	Name	ID	Name
1	id1	name1	id1	name2	id1	name2	No conflict.
2	id1	name1	id2	name1	id1	name1	Two entities with different IDs have the same name. The conflict is resolved by replacing the ID of the replication entity with the ID of the server entity.
3	id1	name1	id1	name2	Conflict		No resolution and there is a conflict.
3	id2	name2	id2	name1	Conflict		No resolution and there is a conflict.

Long name conflict resolution

You can import replication files with entities names that are longer than permitted. Long names are shortened to the first name that is legal and not occupied. A shortened name looks like this:

<first part of the name> < text> <length limit exceeds ~31>

If the system identifies a conflict with one of the existing names, the index is automatically incremented to resolve conflicts.