Subject: Solution
Hi Steve,
Yes we did find the cause of this. Our servers are now Domino R7 and there is a feature of R7 (that I was not aware of and that does not appear to be documented in the Admin Help or the Release Notes) called ‘replication triangulation’ … that you can read about in the technote below. Basically Domino R7 servers keep a record of each server that the db has replicated with. So if Server A replicates with ServerB and ServerB then replicates with ServerC, the replication history for ServerC is added to the replication history on ServerA via ServerB. If you view the replication history with an R7 client, you can see that the ‘‘indirect’’ replication history entries are marked with an asterisk. You cannot see this with an R6 client. Here is the technote that explains it (properly):
http://www-1.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?rs=0&q1=replication+history&uid=swg21270104&loc=en_GB&cs=utf-8&cc=uk&lang=en
There was a second technote about this, that I still have the URL for but I can’t now find on IBM Web site. Here is the URL and the text of that technote, that I had kept for posterity :o)
Why does an asterisk appear in the Replication History (when viewed with an R7 + client)
http://www-1.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=swg21234661
Problem
An asterisk appears next to certain entries in the Action column of the Replication History dialog box. What does the asterisk denote?
Solution
The asterisk is related to a replication performance improvement, which was introduced in Lotus® Domino® 7.0. Let’s explain the improvement with an example.
Prior to Domino 7.0
Bob uses a local replica of his mail file. He normally replicates with only his home mail server, which has excellent reliability - it has stayed up for two years without a problem. But one day, there is a power failure. So, Bob’s Notes® client fails over and locates another replica of his mail file on a backup server. When scheduled replication begins, the replication history of his database shows that he has not replicated with the backup server for years, so the replication code must check all his mail for the last few years to determine which notes to replicate. This takes awhile!
Beginning in Domino 7.0
Bob replicates with his home mail server the day before the power failure. When replication is complete, the scheduled replication code now records replication history (i.e., that Bob has replicated with his home mail server.) The new code sees that in the replication history of Bob’s home server, the server has replicated successfully with his backup server, and that it was a complete replication (i.e., not selective, or interrupted in any way.)
So, it infers that if the home server replicated completely with the backup server, then Bob’s client can mark its history as having successfully replicated with the backup server. Now, when the power goes down and Bob’s client replicates with the backup server, the replication history shows that only a few notes must be examined, and replication completes quickly.
The asterisk in the replication history indicates that replication was complete (i.e., no selective replication formula and was not interrupted in any way.) This is the indicator used to allow another replication to update its replication history with multiple servers, even though only one replication was done.