partitioned? distributed? parallel? replicated?

I know what I want to do, but don't know which buzzword applies: I have an application which sits between an http service and an Oracle server. I would like to "partition" the Oracle server in such a way that two (or more) Oracle servers contain the same database, but different data, segmented by some data value (e.g. account name, or region). My questions is what am I talking about, horizontal distribution? Aside from knowing (or not knowing) what I'm talking about, is it possible to make this segmentation transparen to my application, i.e. can Oracle manage the segmentation (perhaps via a "gateway-type" process perhaps running on the application server?

Thanks for any thoughts on the matter!

Brant Cooper
bcooper_at_tumbleweed.com Received on Tue Feb 02 1999 - 18:20:16 CST