Autonomous data sources with distributed and decentralized controls are a main characteristic of Big Data applications. Being autonomous, each data source is able to generate and collect information without involving (or relying on) any centralized control. This is similar to the World Wide Web (WWW) setting where each web server provides a certain amount of information and each server is
able to fully function without necessarily relying on other servers. On the other hand, the enormous volumes of the data also make an application vulnerable to attacks or malfunctions, if the whole system has to rely on any centralized control unit. For major Big Data-related applications, such as Google, Flicker, Facebook, and Walmart, a large number of server farms are deployed all over the world to ensure nonstop services and quick responses for local markets. Such autonomous sources are not only the solutions of the technical designs, but also the results of the legislation and the regulation rules in different countries/ regions. For example, Asian markets of Walmart are inherently different from its North American markets in terms of seasonal promotions, top sell items, and customer
behaviors. More specifically, the local government regulations also impact on the wholesale management process and result in restructured data representations and data warehouses for local markets.
