Replication Application 0.12 released

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1

I’m happy to announce the release of Replication Application 0.12. And since I forgot last month, I’m also happy to announce the release of Replication Application 0.11.

In 0.11 the main improvements are:

  • a new very explicit banner is displayed when a document had a replication conflict until someone decide it’s OK and remove the banner
  • new log for messages successfully sent

For 0.12 the focus was on improving even more the logging of sent/received messages and especially the customization of it to associate more metadata with messages and messages events. It also comes with the following:

  • bulletproofed database handling to avoid broken database access during upgrades
  • new concept of “unreplicated” replication message, which used to be sent as delete document messages, the main difference currently if that a document which is not replicated anymore is not kept in the trash bin

See more details on https://extensions.xwiki.org/xwiki/bin/view/Extension/Replication%20Application/#Hv0.12.

Hopefully, the next version will be a 1.0. The only extra feature planned right now is the only thing that was blocking the recommendation of this extension: a way to make sure an instance really is what it’s claiming to be (planning a signature based system).

2

Cool! I’ve skimmed the docs, I hope I didn’t misunderstand: does this produce a 1:1 automated replica (history included) of a page in another wiki?

3

Yes, it automatically synchronizes a page between two completely different XWiki instances (as long as they can access each other through HTTP/HTTPS).

4

We are thinking about moving our XWiki instance outside our network and this application may fit, instead of backing up and manually moving everything. Can we later decider to switch off our current instance and start using the replicated one like a regular, unique instance?

5

Hi,

Sure it’s possible at any time to stop replicating pages on an instance, either by stopping the replication on the page itself (see: https://extensions.xwiki.org/xwiki/bin/view/Extension/Replication%20Application/#HStandardcontroller) or by unlinking the instance (see https://extensions.xwiki.org/xwiki/bin/view/Extension/Replication%20Application/#HLinkinginstances)

Be aware that the replication extension currently have a limitation regarding notifications: basically the notifications are not directly replicated, but they might be triggered back on new instances whenever the pages are replicated. This have some side effect, for example notifications already read will be displayed as new on the replicated instance. See: https://extensions.xwiki.org/xwiki/bin/view/Extension/Replication%20Application/#HNotificationsreplication

6

If by “everything” you really mean the entire wiki with everything it contains then I would not recommend it right now as the Replication Application is really more designed to replicate configured pages and won’t work well for a complete wiki (plus you are going to be missing a lot of things since a wiki is not just about wiki pages).

1 Like
7

Thanks for the clarification.