I agree that Web Services is not really going to help you here as XML has a relatively large overhead and redundancy which is problem when you need to transfer large amounts of data over a low bandwidth. LDAP Directory Servers work well for this kind of distributed database system but you'll probably have difficulty persuading your client to switch from Oracle. I guess one thing you could do though is to compress the data you want to transfer into a BLOB and then use ftp to transfer the data, deserialize the blob at the other end and save it into the Oracle database. You could use a Web Service wrapper as an interface to the ftp service so remote users can control the process. I imagine there are already Web Services out there that do this kind of thing. The main problem will be security - there are secure versions of ftp, but I don't know how good they are or whether your client will accept them.
Ben ----- Original Message ----- From: "Markus Frommherz" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "axis-user" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Wednesday, February 05, 2003 2:04 PM Subject: Antw: RE: Data Transfer with XML between two DB's- a Real world Case It seems unlikely, that webservices might better your situation. In Ora 8.x, xml is only a wrapper for your data , you must still validate/insert by code (ie. pl-sql or java). >From Ora 9.X upwards, I'm aware of a new functionality , that checks regulary the filesystem (maybe ftp upload) for new xml-documents, validates on a supplied schema, maps and inserts xml -> database(s)), on a mapping. greetings from cologne, markus >>> [EMAIL PROTECTED] 05.02.2003 14.12 Uhr >>> What are the reasons why that database links don't work? What is the volume of data that needs to be transferred? My initial reaction to this scenario is to use database synchronization technology. I probably wouldn't consider using XML or Web services. Anne -----Original Message----- From: Ranjith Kodikara [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Wednesday, February 05, 2003 12:02 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Data Transfer with XML between two DB's- a Real world Case My customer has a requirement like this. There are several locations of that organization (my customer). They have an Oracle database in each of their locations. There is a central server. When daily transactions are processing, they update their location databases and at the end of the day, they have to transfer those data to the central server. Currently we are doing this with Oracle database links and due to so many reasons this is not 100% successful. Communication is through internet dialup connections (we can't tell them to upgrade those lines) We are hoping to go for XML technologies in order to do this data transfer. I have knowledge on XML technologies, but not practical experience. But in this case there is no one in the central server to do any thing. People in locations should be able to transfer data of that particular day to the central server at the end of the day. There are 15 locations plus a central server. When location A finishes its works, it sends its data to the central location. (When it sends those data, it (A) updates a flag in the database records. It can identify unsent records by those flag.) Then the Oracle database in the central server should be updated with location A's records. At that time the database in the central server would have been updated with other locations data (for an example, location B's data). Then at the same time those data should go to location A and location A's database should be updated with those location B's data that the central server already have. My question is how can I do this? What s the best technology to use? (Web Services etc.) Can you recommend a book or some of web resources? There is no one in the central server to do this. I hope the location user to do this. Still I am wondering which technology to use. I already experienced in JSP, Java and Servlets. I have done some works with Xerces, Xalan and WebServices. If I am going to use Axis for this, an I do this with Axis ? Is it reliable Axis to do this? (Because this is a critical real world application) I appreciate if some of you give me some guidance here. I would greatly appreciate your response. Thanks and best regards, Ranjith Kodikara [EMAIL PROTECTED]