The image creation process forces checkpoint and runs in atomic mode.
If image_file_path does not contain path components (slashes or backslashes), image slices are stored in one of backup directories defined in virtuoso.ini using round-robin strategy.
This function is used to create image of publication to be replayed on a subscribed upon initial setup. This can be used when publication data is so large to be copied via repl_init_copy() which uses VDB operations. The image file(s) created by this function must be loaded on subscriber with replay() function in order of their cration (if image is splitted on to a several files).
This shows creating a image with inital data of the published items and store in the 'tbl_pub.log' file.
SQL> DB.DBA.REPL_PUB_INIT_IMAGE ('table_publication', 'tbl_pub.log', 1000000);
Furthermore the image can be loaded on a subscriber. Note that this comman MUST be issued on the subscriber side. Note that REPL_PUB_INIT_IMAGE() will make more files when size of the initial file is greater than 1Mb, so in that case the additional files will be named tbl_pub.log.N where N is a sequence beginning from 1 and they also need to be loaded.
SQL> replay 'tbl_pub.log'; ... if there a more than one image file load sequentialy ... SQL> replay 'tbl_pub.log.1'; ...