Not only distributed databases IMHO. Consider a large
worldwide firm, where it would be impractical to have one worldwide database
(usually in the US,
because many Americans think there's not much outside
America). In this case you would setup two 'mirror-sites', with a database
having the same
structure and the same name. The only thing that differentiates
them is the domain. Example, assume there is an instance for Oracle Financials
within
several Oracle offices. In this case you would get
[email protected]
[email protected]
and so on. I have been using this setup, works fine.
This is what they call a hierarchical networking in the 'Understanding
Sqlnet' manual.
Hth,
Sybrand Bakker, Oracle DBA