Database replication and consistency check I got a question about two databases (in Oracle 10g) that I have, let's call them A and B. A have some information (in various tables) and I want B to get a partial copy of some tables from A, and constantly check changes in A and 'sync' them in B.

I want to ask you about some method, technique or maybe ideas, knowing that I can't make any change in A (just selects, no triggers).

I thank you help and patience (for possible edits) in advance.

Additional information:

Thanks for the answers, I don't know if it's relevant, but I found the MINUS operator, though I'm not sure if it works with a "sub table" (select).
Your options are rather limited because of your requirements to "constantly check ... sync" and "can't make any change in A".  Things such as materialized view logs, dbms_alert, streams, and a standby database are all off the table.  

If the tables in A are constantly having all of their rows updated then (as Jack Douglas said) a materialized view would be the easiest to setup.  In the more likely event that most of the records don't change in A from moment to moment, you will probably want to setup a package (or packages) on B that select from A to merge and delete as necessary on B.  This will only be as up to date as the frequency in which it is run, but given your requirements it may be the best you can do.

Specifically, your package should do the following:


Delete from B rows that do not exist in A.
Merge A into B updating when matched and inserting when not matched.


If you want to avoid hitting the table in A multiple times you could insert the entirety of the table into a global temporary table on B and then do your Delete/Merge from there.

Concerning Minus:
Minus can tell you all the rows from a query of A that are not in B.  By union-ing this with B minus query of A you can get all rows that are different, but this would probably take longer to process even before adding the insert/update part.  If A doesn't get updates or deletes then you could insert the results of the first minus, but an insert into B...where not exists A... would still be faster and simpler.