Application of data fragmentation and replication methods in the cloud: a review

Data fragmentation and replication are an essential issue in cloud databases, since information demands are huge and improving performance through distributed database design techniques is a necessity. This paper aims to provide a review of the literature about data fragmentation and replication methods applied in a cloud environment in the last eight years, to determine if the methods take into account both techniques (fragmentation and replication) together, consider a cloud database, are easy to implement, are focused on improving the performance of the database, are complete (i.e., the paper includes all the necessary information to implement the method), and if they provide a cost model. To meet this objective we analyzed and classified 83 papers concerning data fragmentation and replication techniques. Finally, we selected the best method of our comparative analysis and presented an architecture of a web application for data fragmentation and replication in the cloud based on such method.