Where local databases have been independently developed, we often find ”islands of electronic information”. There are many reasons why we should integrate these sometimes incompatible ”islands” into one database in order to better utilize the company’s information resources and make them more readily accessible and available. Once integrated, we can either centralize or distribute the database. We can distribute via fragmentation and replication. How do we decide whether or not to distribute and what data and applications to put where? What are the advantages and disadvantages of database distribution, fragmentation and replication? How do we design a distributed database? What roles does the DDBMS play and how does a distributed database system work? How can we solve distribution problems like transaction concurrency, data integrity, and updating of replicas? Our suggestion is to integrate the ”islands of electronic information” into one homogeneous database, distributing it with fragmentation and replication according to database usage patterns.