Oracle has recently completed the acquisition of GoldenGate software during the writing of this book. The acquisition brings an exciting and interesting time to Oracle's line-up of Data Integration and Replication technology. Oracle Data Integration (ODI) is currently positioned as "a fully unified solution for building, deploying, and managing real-time, data-centric architectures in an SOA, BI, and data warehouse environment." While Oracle GoldenGate (OGG) provides "real-time, log-based change data capture, and delivery between heterogeneous systems."

Take note that both of these products are complementary to Oracle Streams. For instance, ODI provides advance ETL/ELT abilities in real time across heterogeneous environments. ODI essentially moves and transforms data regardless of the database platform.

OGG brings a strong story related to supporting heterogeneous environments. OGG brings XSTREAM to Oracle Streams. XSTREAM exposes APIs allowing for data sharing between "other systems that include non-Oracle databases, non-RDBMS Oracle products, filesystems, third-party software applications, and so on." OGG and Streams will eventually merge into one product and take on the best of both worlds. Exactly what comes from the merging of OGG and Streams is being worked on by Oracle. At the time this book went to press the direction is Oracle Streams will continue to be maintained. Emphasis and further development will be on OGG. Whatever the final results are, the merging of OGG and Streams will be a new and exciting product.