Mastership changes of database objects

You can change the mastership of database objects such as records and Workspace items to accommodate the changing needs of users in your environment.

You can transfer mastership of an object with a chmaster command or with the GUI.

Mastership changes are appropriate in the following situations:

You want to allow a user at another replica to modify a record or public query that is mastered by your replica.
You want to make changes to user information that is mastered by another replica.
You are decommissioning a replica, and you must transfer mastership of all objects mastered by that replica to one of the remaining replicas.

Mastership changes are communicated among replicas by the standard synchronization mechanism. The general procedure for changing mastership is as follows:

At the master replica, change mastership of one or more objects to another replica.
At the old master replica, export an update packet from the old master replica to the new master replica.
At the new master replica, import the update packet.

Until the update packet that contains the mastership change is imported at the new master replica, the mastership change is only in the packet, and the replicas in the database family have different information about which replica masters the object.

For example, the administrator at the sanfran_hub replica transfers mastership of the user group QA_ENGINEERING to the bangalore replica and exports an update packet. At this point the following conditions exist:

The sanfran_hub replica considers the user group to be mastered by bangalore.
The bangalore replica considers the user group to be mastered by sanfran_hub.
No one at any replica can modify the user group.

When you complete the mastership transfer by importing the update packet at bangalore, users at bangalore can modify the user group QA_ENGINEERING.

Considerations for mastership changes

If your family includes any read-only or one-way replicas (replicas that import update packets but do not export them), be careful about transferring mastership to these replicas. After you give mastership of an object to a read-only or one-way replica, you cannot change the object’s mastership unless you change the family’s synchronization pattern.

You cannot undo a mastership change made at your site by making the opposite change at your site.