METHOD OF USING A CACHE TO DETERMINE THE VISIBILITY TO A REMOTE DATABASE CLIENT OF A PLURALITY OF DATABASE TRANSACTIONS

Updates made to a central database (3) or to another partially replicated database (23-1) are selectively propagated to a partially replicated database (23-2) if the owner of the partially replicated database (23-2) is deemed to have visibility to the data being updated. Visibility is determined by use of predetermined rules stored in a rules database. Stored rules are assessed against data content of various tables that make up a logical entity, known as a docking object that is being updated. The stored rules are assessed against data content of various tables that make up a docking object, not necessarily being the docking object that is being updated. The visibility rules of these related docking objects are recursively determined. Changes in visibility are determined to enable the central computer to direct the nodes to insert the docking object into its partially replicated database. The predetermined rules are in a declarative form and specify visibility of data based upon structure of the data without reference to data content. Database objects and transactions have an associated visibility strength used to determine the visibility of a transaction to an object.