Rdb: Distributed Option

Rdb data -- anywhere

What stops today's end-users from making fast and intelligent business decisions? Until now, one barrier has been needed data that resides in a variety of sites across both LAN and WAN networks. To bring that data into their desktop applications, users must execute a series of complex queries, develop custom query applications, or resort to integrating data by hand. These time-consuming and expensive tasks can be barriers to success.

Now, Oracle Rdb7 offers the solution: the Rdb7 Distributed Option. The Distributed Option allows each user to define a single logical view that integrates data from a variety of underlying physical databases. This global catalog offers users any Rdb data anywhere, as if from a single database, with no additional tasks. The resulting improved access to corporate information is crucial to business competitiveness.

The Distributed Option works with:

• all Rdb networks, whether IP or DECnet.
• all Rdb applications end-users and database administrators rely on today, applied across multiple databases at once.

The Distributed Option's benefits include:

• Improved end-user performance. Time and effort needed to satisfy a query are drastically reduced, because the global catalog of multiple physical databases allows users to find and retrieve information far more quickly.
• Increased system efficiency. Distributed optimization and data “pipelining” minimize network traffic, routing queries through the most appropriate computing resource.

Data Integration

But what happens when users need to correlate data from databases in addition to Rdb sites, such as manufacturing data from an Rdb7 database and supplier data from an Oracle7 database? Until now, that challenge has required considerable effort, both in user time and system utilization. But when the Distributed Option is used in conjunction with the Rdb Transparent Gateways, each user can reach all needed business information.

Rdb Transparent Gateways provide transparent, read-write access to relational and non-relational databases from a single API, the Rdb API. Gateways exist for Oracle7, DBMS, RMS, IBM's DB2, Sybase, and ODBC data sources. The Rdb Transparent Gateway to Oracle7 can interoperate with all Oracle Transparent Gateways , extending access to IBM's DB400, Informix and many additional data sources.

The Distributed Option offers users views of all joined enterprise data, tailored to individual needs. The user is relieved of the complex task of forming these views from data located in many heterogeneous sources. Now, both end-users and application programmers access these views as if they were tables in a single local relational database. The views created can be horizontally partitioned, hash JOINs, index JOINs, and other advanced SQL constructs.

Toward this end, the Distributed Option utilizes:

• Rdb Gateways' underlying architecture, which offers each underlying database's capabilities information to the Distributed Option.
• Query optimizer, which takes into account cost factors and capabilities to determine the optimal plan, and which decomposes distributed queries by using as many features as possible of the underlying database and by employing state-of-the-art techniques such as query unnesting and partition elimination.
• Global catalog, which provides location transparency and operates as an autonomous metadata repository, and whose defined views and stored procedures allow the user to hide semantic differences among the underlying databases.
• Visual Schema Builder, which provides the ability to define and manage the global catalog.
• Highly available horizontal partitioned views, which support continuous distributed processing when connectivity is lost.
• Helper services, which compensate for the lack of capabilities in an underlying dbms database.
• Security checks, enabled without interfering with the access controls specified in the underlying data sources.

Summary

The Distributed Option's various features provide data integration at the server level, enhancing user productivity while minimizing network traffic to and from the desktop.

When working with the Rdb Transparent Gateways and Parallel Query Option, the Distributed Option provides heterogeneous cross-database transparency, working cooperatively with existing tools and databases. It utilizes a range of features to deliver robust and high-performance data access and data integration, both among Rdb databases and beyond.

For More Information

Contact your Oracle Sales Representative, your Oracle Sales Office, or call 1-800-ORACLE1. Outside of the United States please call 415-506-5701. You may also send electronic mail requests to infordb@us.oracle.com or call the Oracle Rdb Hotline: 603-881-0956.