Oracle Streams

Distinguished Colleagues,

I usually earn my daily bread performing some or other Oracle Database Development ( usually PL/SQL being the "tool" ) but, on recent posted requirements AND in a recent interview by some pretty tech-savy folks, I have been noticing more and more mention of "Oracle Streams".

I realized I fell into the rut of "just know what you're getting paid to do" and have neglected some pretty cool stuff that Oracle is doing ( like Streams ) so I am on a mission to discover and implement some of these tools and techniques.

I am wondering if anyone has opinions and/or real-life experience implementing Streams and if so, what solutions were you able to provide and how would you compare your Streams success with what you might have implemented had Streams not been a choice?

The first thing I thought when I began researching was; Some stoner at Oracle realized the issues with performance or currency of data "transmitted" to other "consumers" could be resolved at no cost to the produuction DB performance by simply originating the communication of changes from the Redo Logs. They're already there and have EVERYTHING you might ever want or need.. Probably was a litle more "corporate" than that but, I am impressed so far. I am also wondering if the ETL tool shops are getting nervous.

Thanks in advance for any insight.

Sayjak