According to Elmasri and Navathe (2004, p.43), a Distributed Database Management System (DDBMS) "can have the actual database and DBMS software distributed over many sites, connected by a computer network". It provides access mechanisms that make the distribution transparent to the user. A database management system (DBMS) is a computer program (or more typically, a suite of them) designed to manage a database (a large set of structured data), and run operations on the data requested by numerous consumers. ... A database management system (DBMS) is a computer program (or more typically, a suite of them) designed to manage a database, a large set of structured data, and run operations on the data requested by numerous users. ...

Homogeneous DDBMSs run the same software at multiple sites; i.e. brand X is used at all sites. There are trends, according to Elmasri and Navathe, for systems to abstract heterogeneous DBMSs (e.g. IBM, Microsoft, Oracle etc.). This relates to a loosely coupled federated DBMS (aka multidatabase), which provides a certain amount of local autonomy.

See also

• Distributed database

A distributed database is a database that is under the control of a central database management system in which storage devices are not all attached to a common CPU. It may be stored in multiple computers located in the same physical location, or may be dispersed over a network of...

References

Elmasri, R. and Navathe, S. B. (2004) Fundamentals of Database Systems Fourth Edition, Pearson Education.

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