Applications That Use Advanced Replication

Replication supports a variety of applications that often have different requirements. Some applications allow for relatively autonomous individual materialized view sites. For example, sales force automation, field service, retail, and other mass deployment applications typically require data to be periodically synchronized between central database systems and a large number of small, remote sites, which are often disconnected from the central database. Members of a sales force must be able to complete transactions, regardless of whether they are connected to the central database. In this case, remote sites must be autonomous.

On the other hand, applications such as call centers and Internet systems require data on multiple servers to be synchronized in a continuous, nearly instantaneous manner to ensure that the service provided is available and equivalent at all times. For example, a retail web site on the Internet must ensure that customers see the same information in the online catalog at each site. Here, data consistency is more important than site autonomy.

Advanced Replication can be used for each of the types of applications described in the previous paragraphs, and for systems that combine aspects of both types of applications. In fact, Advanced Replication can support both mass deployment and server-to-server replication, enabling integration into a single coherent environment. In such an environment, for example, sales force automation and customer service call centers can share data.

Advanced Replication can replicate data in environments that use different releases of Oracle and in environments that run Oracle on different operating systems. Therefore, applications that use data in such an environment can use Advanced Replication.