THE ISSUE OF SITE AUTONOMY IN DISTRIBUTED DATABASE ADMINISTRATION

With the increasing trend towards distributed systems, the administration of distributed databases has become very important. A key issue in this environment is the degree of autonomy for each participating site. This paper classifies the degree of site autonomy into three different levels and provides some guidelines for determining the appropriate degree of site autonomy from both organizational and technological perspectives. The alternative organizational structure for database administration and the specific tasks assigned to a Global DBA and Local DBAs under different site autonomy policies is discussed. Finally, the three site autonomy policies are compared