Continuous operation

A distributed database system should never require downtime A distributed database system should provide on-line backup and recovery, and a full and incremental archiving facility. The backup and recovery should be fast enough to be performed online without noticeable detrimental affect on the entire system performance. Location independence Applications should not know, or even be aware of, where the data are physically stored; applications should behave as if all data were stored locally Location independence allows applications and data to be migrated easily from one site to another without modifications.