replication using Oracle Streams vs. Materialized Views?

I'm going to run Oracle 9i at several sites. One site is a 'Master' and the remaining are peer 'slave' sites. Some of these slave sites can only 'connect' every four hours. I am interested in using database replication between the slaves and the master where the slaves will upload row changes to the master and the master will download rows from other tables.

I have found that Materialized Views support the concept of disconnected sites similar to a laptop that may only periodically be connected to the net. Although I'm tempted to use 'Oracle Streams', all of the information that I have read neatly avoids the issue of periodically connected databases.

Can Oracle Streams handle this task? Could anyone supply a good reference link? What happens to Streams if the connection gets dropped in the middle of the cycle?

Thanks.
Lynn Received on Fri Aug 16 2002 - 15:51:30 CDT