Choosing a business goal for the replication asset

When you set up your Data Replication asset, you must set the business goal option to specify how the service replicates data from a replication source to a replication target.

Business goal settings

You can configure your replication asset to use one of the following types of business goal settings:

Copy: The Copy business goal configures the replication asset to synchronize the specified schemas and tables from the source database to the target database.
CDC Replication: The CDC Replication business goal configures the replication asset to use a Data Replication Access Server connection to configure and operate Change Data Capture (CDC) subscriptions by connecting the Data Replication service to a remote CDC replication deployment.
Change Log: The Change Log business goal configures the replication asset to document and track modifications that are made to a source database schema over time in a record called a change log. In addition, the replication asset synchronizes schemas and tables from the source to the target database. A copy of the changes to the source database and the change log are delivered to the target database. For more information about how to customize your change log settings, see Configuring the Change Log business goal. Use the Change Log business goal to preserve consistency, guarantee compatibility with earlier versions of your data, and ease schema migrations between various environments, such as development, testing, and production.

Compatible source and target databases based on business goal

Make sure that your chosen source and target can be used for your chosen business goal:

Table 1. Replication sources and targets and the business goals they can be used with
Data store	Copy	CDC Replication	Change Log
Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL	Source ✓		Source ✓
Apache Kafka	Target ✓		Target ✓
IBM Data Replication Access Server		Source ✓ Target ✓
IBM Db2	Source ✓		Source ✓
IBM Db2 on Cloud	Source ✓ Target ✓		Source ✓ Target ✓
IBM Db2 Warehouse	Target ✓		Target ✓
IBM Db2 for z/OS	Source ✓		Source ✓
IBM watsonx.data	Target ✓		Target ✓
Oracle	Source ✓		Source ✓
PostgreSQL	Source ✓		Source ✓

Learn more

Configuring the Change Log business goal

Parent topic: Replicating data with the Data Replication service