APEX

hi -- My apex application queries tables on other databases.

Right now, I have an interactive report based on a collection. This is how the collection is created:

An application process runs on page load for interactive reports. It calls apex_collection.create_collection_from_query,
where the query is returned by a local database function. The function takes a table name and a database
name as a parameter. The function queries the specified table on the specified database. The resulting collection
is what is queried in the source for the interactive report.

This process is very fast when the database is the APEX host. It is SLOW, unacceptably so, when a remote
database is being queried. Incidentally, the same query on a remote database, run from sqlplus, is at least
5 times faster.

What could explain this performance? The remote databases are on physically remote machines, but as
the performance in sqlplus is good, I don't think this is the issue.

Also, when I replicate this same process w/ "remote" databases on the same machine (eg, using database
links but for DBs on the same machine as the APEX database) performance is good.

Some combination of APEX and the network? I'm quite discouraged...

Thanks,
C