In Microsoft SQL Server version 7.0, distributed queries enable SQL Server users to access data outside a SQL Server-based server, either within other servers running SQL Server or other data sources that expose an OLE DB interface. OLE DB provides a way to uniformly access tabular data from heterogeneous data sources.
A distributed query for the purpose of this discussion is any SELECT, INSERT, UPDATE, or DELETE statement that references tables and rowsets from one or more external OLE DB data sources.
A remote table is a table that is stored in an OLE DB data source and is external to the server running SQL Server executing the query. A distributed query accesses one or more remote tables.