The placement of data in respect to the applications that need
it is an important consideration when designing a distributed relational database.
When making such placement decisions, consider the
following items:
- The level of performance needed from the applications
- Requirements for the security, currency, consistency, and availability
of the data across locations
- The amount of data needed and the predicted patterns of data access
- If the distributed relational database functions needed are available
- The skills needed to support the server and the skills that are actually
available
- Who "owns" the data (that is, who is responsible for maintaining the accuracy
of the data)
- Management strategy for cross-system security, accounting, monitoring
and tuning, problem handling, data backup and recovery, and change control
- Distributed database design decisions, such as where to locate data in
the network and whether to maintain single or multiple copies of the data