Frequently Asked Questions
2a. about defining data-subsetting or partitioning rules
Q: how does Data Safety Corporation define 'data sub-setting' or 'partitioning rules' and why are they necessary in a distributed database system?
A: each database in a distributed system contains some defined portion of the total data in the distributed system. The server database contains all of the data that is in the distributed system. Remote clients each contain some portion of the data the server contains. This portion of the data that each client database contains is referred to as a sub-set. The act of defining sub-sets is also referred to as defining "partitioning rules" for the database, or sometimes simply "partitioning".
Most non-distributed databases have not been designed to provide the partitioning rules as part of the schema of the database. Since all data resides in a single database, there is no need to specify partitioning rules. Each user typically works only with the data they are interested in. Sometimes the application will be able to filter information based on the current user, and this provides a form of partitioning for the data. For distributed databases, partitioning rules are needed to limit the amount of data that needs to be transmitted to the remote user, due to transmission cost and time issues. Additionally, partitioning rules provide a secondary data security benefit, in the event of loss or theft, because only a small portion of the corporate database will be compromised
