Distributed Data Dictionary Management
Distributed Data Dictionary Management
Management
Centralized Approach
The centralized architecture is the traditional approach to building a
metadata repository. It offers efficient access to information,
adaptability to additional data stores, scalability to capture
additional metadata, and high performance.
Under this approach the system catalog is maintained at one of the
participating sites in the distributed database.
This site acts as the central coordinator of the distributed data base
management system.
However, like any other centralized architecture, centralized
metadata repository is a single point of failure. It requires
continuous synchronization with the participants of the data
environment, may become a performance bottleneck, and may
negatively affect quality of metadata. Indeed, the need to copy
information from various applications and data stores into the
central repository may compromise data quality if proper data
validation procedures are not a part of the data acquisition process.
Moreover people who need to use and change local metadata do
not want a central authority controlling their usage of metadata.
Distributed Approach
A distributed architecture avoids the concerns and
potential errors of maintaining copies of the source
metadata by accessing up-to-date metadata from all
systems' metadata repositories in real time.
Distributed metadata repositories offer superior metadata
quality since the users see the most current information
about the data.
However, since distributed architecture requires real-time
availability of all participating systems, a single system
failure may potentially bring the metadata repository
down.
Also, as source systems configurations change, or as new
systems become available, a distributed architecture needs
to adapt rapidly to the new environment, and this degree
of flexibility may require a temporary shutdown of the
repository.
Distributed Approach
Full
Replication
Approach
Partial
Replication
Approach