V5.2-001 permits NOBEFORE_IMAGE journaling with GT.M database replication. Previously, GT.M database replication required BEFORE_IMAGE journaling. NOBEFORE_IMAGE journaling consumes less I/O bandwidth in normal use while BEFORE_IMAGE journaling delivers faster recovery times from system failures. Especially in a logical multi-site deployment of an application that pushes the I/O bandwidth of the servers it runs on, increased recovery times in the unlikely event of a crash that result from the use of NOBEFORE_IMAGE journaling may well be a trade-off worth making in order to obtain more throughput from available servers.

Also in V5.2-001, it is now possible to replicate from a primary instance deployed on a server with a big-endian hardware architecture (for example, IBM pSeries AIX or Sun SPARC Solaris) to one with a little-endian architecture (for example, x86 GNU/Linux) and vice versa.