The APPLY process does not need to run directly on the server running the target database, as it uses network connection, SQL*Net for Oracle, client-server for MySQL and ODBC for SQL Server to that database.
However, it is advised to run it on the target server, as the network communication overhead decreases the performance of the APPLY.
Still, it can be useful:
- if the target server has no capacity left to accommodate the APPLY process.
- if the target server is not running on a supported platform.
There is no special configuration to enable this – just use the apply-running-server when configuring listen/remote interfaces in the wizard, and set up database connectivity there so APPLY can reach the database.