The Hot Standby option is a discrete, separately-purchasable Oracle product that provides high-performance database replication. The Hot Standby option prevents your Oracle Rdb database or Oracle CODASYL DBMS database from becoming a single point of failure by physically duplicating the database at a geographically remote-standby site. In the event of a node or cluster failure, the replicated "hot standby" database automatically becomes the master database and takes over application processing. The Hot Standby option automatically performs coordinated database synchronization with high performance and minimal impact on system resources. You need to intervene manually only to start the replication services, and to fail over applications to the hot standby database if a failure occurs. The Hot Standby option does not require specific hardware to operate, and you do not need to make any changes to application coding. You start the replication operation by entering a Replicate command using either the Oracle RMU or DBO utility, as appropriate. These utilities provide syntax and semantics for the following Replicate commands: o Replicate After_Journal Configure-automatically sets up replication attributes for the master and standby databases o Replicate After_Journal Reopen_Output-allows you to view a replication output file o Replicate After_Journal Start-initiates replication operations on the master node or the standby node o Replicate After_Journal Stop-terminates replication operations on the node where you enter the command Once started, the replication operation automates the AIJ backup and rollforward operations. The standby database is created from a backup copy of the master database. As database modifications are applied to the after-image journal for the master database, the Hot Standby option automatically applies the modification over a high-speed network connection to the after- image journal for the standby database. Although, the primary purpose of database replication is to provide a higher degree of availability for mission-critical systems, the standby database can also serve as a read-only database for offline generation of reports. The Hot Standby option is completely compatible with the standard Oracle Rdb and CODASYL DBMS database components. The master and standby databases can be implemented on systems running OpenVMS Alpha or OpenVMS I64, or any combination of these operating systems. For example, you can use the Hot Standby option to replicate a master database running on OpenVMS Alpha to a standby database running on OpenVMS I64. The only requirement is that the network connection is common to both operating system platforms. For additional information, see the Hot_Standby Help topic in the command line help for RMU. Refer to the Oracle Rdb7 and Oracle CODASYL DBMS: Guide to Hot Standby Databases for information about the Hot Standby option.