The user can then choose to publish the report for everyone to use or keep it for local use. The distributed database technology is the key to make the LPD work. Even though the information would have to be re-entered into the database at IA, they would still be able to get most of the information needed for corporate reports. Without distributed database technology, this would be the scenario. Synchronization is the process of exchanging updates between copies of the same database in different locations.
Replication is the means of automatic synchronization between two databases.
This process is fairly straightforward in flat file databases like the E-mail directory and Lotus Notes databases and could be handled through a series of exports and imports. The process is immensely more complicated when you have many tables that are all inter-related and is very hard to implement. But now, many programs are offering dependable replication which gives us the technology we need to share information corporate-wide. With the capability of sharing data around the world, we now need standard applications to process the information and facilitate the sharing process. LPD is the first attempt for SIL to share database information between home and field offices.