
Distributed Database Concepts
■
37
Some relational systems that are part of a heterogeneous distributed DBMS use gateways,
which convert the language and data model of each different DBMS into the language and data
model of the relational system. Gateways are mechanisms that provide access to other systems.
In a gateway, one vendor (e.g., Oracle) provides single direction access through its DBMS to
another database managed by a different vendor’s DBMS (e.g., IBM DB2). The two DBMSs
need not share the same data model. For example, many RDBMS vendors provide gateways to
hierarchical and network DBMSs. However, the gateway approach has some