Synchronizing database data - intercontinental dependencies...

I have a customer that has a database (location: The Netherlands) which is used for their plant processes. This customer will have another plant in Taiwan that needs access to the database data. Apparently the lines in Taiwan are not stable, so they guess that a database is needed on site in Taiwan, that will represent the database status in The Netherlands. Without a database on site in Taiwan the plant processing in Taiwan will come to a full stop.  

At current state, I am not sure, if a replication method can be build within Oracle that is based on "read only" data. So for instance, the database in The Netherlands will contain a schema that represents the data in Taiwan and the database in Taiwan will contain a schema that represents the data in The Netherlands. So in all, I am not sure yet if a business requirement is: only "lookup reference" data or also "live synchronization" of tables in both databases. The customer guesses that there will be more plants to join, so a solution should be flexible enough to be implemented with other plants world-wide, without causing, for example, congestion on the hube environment.  

I guess a dataguard (11g) implementation (cross-refernced) could work in based on the conditions "read-only", but I am worried about the flexibility for future demands. If the conditions are not "read-only", I guess stuff has to be build to solve the problem (but I wonder about the state of "data integrity").    

Has anyone experience with these kinds of "inter-continental" problems?  

Solutions don't have to be based on Oracle technology (although the database will be Oracle software based).    

Thanks in advance.    

Marco Gralike
AMIS Services BV
The Netherlands.  

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