When a relation is fragmented, we must be able to recover the original relation from the fragments:
Horizontal fragmentation: The union of the horizontal fragments must be equal to the original relation. Fragments are usually also required to be disjoint.
Vertical fragmentation: The collection of vertical fragments should be a lossless-join.
In general a relation can be (horizontally or vertically) fragmented, and each resulting fragment can be further fragmented.
Replication
Replication means that we store several copies of a relation or relation fragment. An entire relation can be replicated at one or more sites. Similarly, one or more fragments of a relation can be replicated at other sites. For example, if a relation R is fragmented into R1, R2, and R3, there might be just one copy of R1, whereas R2 is replicated at two other sites and R3 is replicated at all sites.
The motivation for replication is two fold:
Increased availability of data: If a site that contains a replica goes down, w can nd the same data at other sites. Similarly, if local copies of remote relation are available, we are less vulnerable to failure of communication links.
Faster query evaluation: Queries can execute faster by using a local copy of a relation instead of going to a remote site.
There are two kinds of replication, called synchronous and asynchronous replication which differ primarily in how replicas are kept current when the relation is modfied.