Deployment Templates

Deployment templates simplify the task of deploying and maintaining many remote materialized view sites. Using deployment templates, you can define a collection of materialized view definitions at a master site, and you can use parameters in the definitions so that the materialized views can be customized for individual users or types of users.

For example, you might create one template for the sales force and another template for field service representatives. In this case, a parameter value might be the sales territory or the customer support level. When a remote user connects to a master site, the user can query a list of available templates. When the user instantiates a template, the materialized views are created and populated at the remote site. The parameter values can either be supplied by the remote user or taken from a table maintained at the master site.

Online and Offline Instantiation

When a user instantiates a template at a materialized view site, the object DDL (for example, CREATE MATERIALIZED VIEW or CREATE TABLE statements) is executed to create the schema objects at the materialized view site, and the objects are populated with the appropriate data. Users can instantiate templates while connected to the master site over a network (online instantiation), or while disconnected from the master site (offline instantiation).

Offline instantiation is often used to decrease server loads during peak usage periods and to reduce remote connection times. To instantiate a template offline, you package the template and required data on some type of storage media, such as tape, CD-ROM, and so on. Then, instead of pulling the data from the master site, users pull the data from the storage media containing the template and data.