I am afraid i am quite new in the world of programming...well the problem stands like this..
i have to implement through JDBC a nework search , get some documents back, parse them and store the information into a local database.
My question is, that in order to populate the local database do you need to make a master temporary table or a view and then populate your local database. Do you have to use the 'merge' command to ensure no data duplication and data overwrite?

I'm not sure if I have undersood your question ....

If you want to put something into a database, you will need a table ... To make sure you do not have duplicate entries, you will have to create a primary key (For eg, in employee table, the employee id can be the primary key )

BTW, what database are you planning to use ? I ask this question because you have cross posted in Oracle forum also ..

Cheers
Sathyaram