The Oracle Open Gateway product set (previously called SQL*Connect) is used
to access data from non-Oracle databases (eg. DB/2, Sybase, Informix, etc), and
even non-relational data sources like Adabas and file systems.
Oracle Open Gateways can be divided into 4 categories:
Transparent Gateways
Procedural Gateways
Access Managers
Oracle Replication Servers
Transparent Gateways are most commonly used and enable access to non-Oracle
data sources as if they were Oracle databases.
They allow you to interact with these foreign databases without regard to
differences in SQL implementation and with the added ability to perform
distributed processing.
Procedural Gateways are used to integrate with non-ralational data sources.
Normally a toolkit is used to map foreign database functions to PL/SQL stored
procedures. These PL/SQL procedures can be called from any Oracle product like
Oracle Forms and SQL*Plus.
Access Managers are exclusively used on IBM's AS/400 and MVS platforms and
allows products like CICS to interact with Oracle and other IBM data sources
like IMS. Look at the Oracle/MVS FAQ for more info.
Replication Servers support heterogenious data replication. For Oracle to
Oracle replication, see the Oracle Replication FAQ.
