So when to use Active Data Guard or Golden Gate?

On my previous post, I posted some differences between Active Data Guard and Golden Gate. But some people may find it more confusing and ask when should I use Active Data Guard? or Golden Gate?

So let me try to summarize it here:

Use Active Data Guard for:
Disaster Recovery, Data Protection/HA (Oracle environment)

Use Golden Gate for:
Information Distribution, Data Integration, Cross-platform migrations (For ex. SQL Server to Oracle)


They can also complements each other.
ADG provides read-only replica for standby database, and GG capturing standby archive logs then replicating it to 'n' different target systems.

What's the difference between Active Data Guard and GoldenGate?

Active Data Guard vs Golden Gate?

Active Data Guard (ADG) is a replication technology from Oracle to create exact mirror of one database.
GoldenGate (GG) is a heterogeneous database replication from different database vendors to one or more target repository (Database, File, JMS Queue, etc.).

Summary of the differences between ADG and GG:

Active Data Guard:
- Ship from memory
- Sync or Async
- Simple one way replication
- Standby open read-only
- Zero I/O overhead, near-zero primary performance impact
- Standby database is exact physical replica
- No data type or other restrictions
- Integrated with Oracle Kernel

GoldenGate:
- Read and ship from redo logs (configurable to read directly from table, if necessary)
- Async only
- Advanced, multi-master replication (if conflicts can be avoided or resolved)
- Target database open read-write
- I/O Overhead and capture processing on primary
- Replica is logical copy maintained using SQL
- Data type and other restrictions
- External to Oracle Database

From licensing perspective, GoldenGate bundles Active Data Guard together.