ClearCase replica naming and replication

Over the years I've seen various conventions used for the naming of ClearCase VOB replicas. Some of the more popular, especially from when I started at my current company, some 12 years or so ago were:

• <site name>
  
• <division name>
  
• <division name>_<site name>
  

Recently, the admins at a remote site I've been working with have adopted a naming convention for their VOB replicas of <vob tag>_<site name>! I couldn't work out why you would want to include the vob tag as part of a replica name until I realized that they were using the supplied ClearCase MultiSite replication scripts.

Eleven or twelve years ago when using ClearCase v2.2 or possibly v3.0.1 I had written my own Perl script to manage replication. I used an earlier shell script as a starting point. Over the next 4 or 5 years I slowly modified the script to take advantage of new features, i.e [ls|ch]replica -actual I haven't touched it since.

This script automatically produced a filename: sync_<vob tag>_<source replica>_<target replica>_<Time stamp>
e.g. if a VOB had a vob tag of /vobs/src and replicas of Austin and Healey, then a pcaket sent from Austin to Healey might have a packet name of sync_vobs_src_Austin_Healey_21072008-101010 with a suffix _<num> if more than one packet was created.

But to get the vob tag to appear with the supplied scripts you need to include the vob tag as part of the replica names. Even then you only see the source replica listed not the target.