Distributed Database Design, Research Paper Example

The implication of distributed database is the type of database that comprises of storage devices that have not been appended to a universal processing unit, a good example being a CPU and under the control of a distributed system of database management (O’Brien & Marakas, 2008) The storage may be done in multiple computers that are positioned in one physical location. They may also be widespread across a network involving interconnected computers. The sites in the system of distributed database are loosely coupled devoid of physical components that they share in common (Özsu & Valduriez, 2011).  The most important issues that are associated with distributed database design include the following:

Allocation of data: the placement of data is done at the sites that are equipped with “optimal” distribution.

Fragmentation: relation, r, is commonly divided into several sub-relations, r₁, r₂, r₃….r_n  that are termed as fragments whose storage is done in diverse sites (O’Brien & Marakas, 2008) This arrangement facilitates reconstruction of actual relation out of the fragments followed by scattering of the fragments into diverse locations. Fragmentation is executed in two schemes, horizontal and vertical fragmentation. In horizontal fragmentation, relations are divided to form more fragments. In vertical, relations are divided through decomposition of schema R (Özsu & Valduriez, 2011).

Replication: this involves maintaining a copy of the fragment in a number of sites. A number of identical replicas of a relation are maintained in dissimilar sites (Özsu & Valduriez, 2011).  This facilitates more availability of data in a scheme and an augmented parallelism on serving a read request. The intended objectives include achievement of reference locality, achieving an enhanced reliability as well as availability and performance, achievement of balanced storage capacities along with costs and minimal costs of communication.

References

O’Brien, J. & Marakas, G.M.(2008) Management Information Systems. NY: McGraw-Hill Irwin.

Özsu M. T. & Valduriez, P., (2011). Principles of Distributed Databases, 3^rd edition, Springer.