Distributed database

Just opposite of the centralized database concept, the distributed database has contributions from the common database as well as the information captured by local computers also. The data is not at one place and is distributed at various sites of an organization. These sites are connected to each other with the help of communication links which helps them to access the distributed data easily.

You can imagine a distributed database as a one in which various portions of a database are stored in multiple different locations(physical) along with the application procedures which are replicated and distributed among various points in a network.

There are two kinds of distributed database, viz. homogenous and heterogeneous. The databases which have same underlying hardware and run over the same operating systems and application procedures are known as homogeneous DDB, for eg. All physical locations in a DDB. Whereas, the operating systems, underlying hardware as well as application procedures can be different at various sites of a DDB which is known as heterogeneous DDB.