Streams vs.

Advanced Replication
Comments below should be qualified with "as of 10g":
According to Oracle Support, Oracle streams will be enhanced
in future versions. Advanced replication will not be enhanced
in future versions.

In 9i, I've read comments by folks stating that Advanced

Replication is more stable than Streams. In 10g the Streams
has stabilized and matured quite a bit.

Streams does not support synchronous replication. Advanced

Replication does. Although one needs to be certifiably insane or
have an excellent network in order to go for synchronous
replication.

Streams does not support BFILEs, REF and nested table types.
Advanced Replication supports them. However, Advanced
Replication does not support LONG/LONG RAW datatypes,
Streams on the other hand does support them. In future versions,
you can expect streams to support all datatypes.

Streams has been touted to be better performing than

Advanced
Replication. I personally have never compared them in terms of
performance, although based on the architecture, I'd be inclined
to think that Streams has better performance.

Advanced Replication requires a master definition site. In

streams,
all sites are master definition sites .. by definition.

Streams is more advanced and flexible than Advanced

Replication.
For example: You can replicate a portion of a table in Streams.
In Advanced Replication you have to replicate the whole table.
In fact in Streams the structure of the table in the two databases
can be different also (for example col1, col2 being replicated from
databaseA and col3, col4 being replicated from databaseB).

Advanced Replication is only for replicating data. Streams can be

for
replicating data, messages etc.

Advanced Replication can replicate data from and Oracle

database to an Oracle database only. Streams can be used to
replicate data from an Oracle database to a non-oracle
database also.

Oracle provides a script/utility to convert an Advanced Replication

environment to a Streams env. In terms of high level API's,
Streams
replication looks similar (although much better) to MM
Replication.
Although, in terms of difficulty of managing or installing, I do not
believe Streams is easier to install or manage than Advanced
Replication. All the basics of Conflict resolution are exactly the
same in both environments. Conflict resolution strategies are
what
make a replicated environment slightly difficult to build and
manage.

There are probably lot of other differences. However, I'd suggest

that
unless you have a compelling reason, there is no sense in using
Advanced Replication in databases 10g and higher. You should be
using Streams which is being actively enhanced and provides
much more flexibility than Advanced Replication.