Editing channels using the Enterprise Manager enables you to change specific attributes of a channel, such as its name, event time-to-live (TTL), capacity, channel keys , or the realm on which the channel exists.

When you edit a channel, its attributes and any events found on the channel are copied to a temporary channel. The old channel is then deleted, the new channel is created, and the original events are copied from the temporary channel to the new channel. The only exception is when you update the Google protocol buffer (Protobuf) descriptor uploaded on the channel. In this case, the channel is not deleted and then re-created.

Since editing a channel involves deleting the old channel, certain activities and objects associated with the old channel are also terminated and should be recreated. For more information about deleting channels, see Deleting Channels and Queues.

As far as possible, channel events are held in memory for performance reasons. The temporary channel is also held in memory, and requires the same amount of memory as the channel being edited. The realm server must be able to allocate sufficient memory to store the temporary copy, otherwise the channel edit operation will be terminated and an error will be logged. If such a situation occurs, you can resolve it by allocating additional heap size, so that the temporary copy can exist in memory at the same time as the channel being edited.