Techniques needed in the management of distributed spatial databases are discussed

abilities of distributed management in the commercial software Oracle and ESRI products are described

and a practical methodology to build distributed spatial applications is suggested. In a distributed spatial database

there is usually a main server and many data servers

and all of them are linked by networks such as internet. In order to guarantee the normal data flow and analysis among clients

main server and data servers

issues of net communication

metadata management

data consistency

data serving

spatial data search engine

seamless data integration

quick updating

data transfer

data queuing and security protection should be solved. Oracle and ESRI series products can act as frames in distributed spatial database management applications

and the performance will be much better if some key components can be developed from bottom.