In DB2 Extended Enterprise Edition, the database is distributed across multiple machines, and database partition servers are installed on a set of machines. Because the database is partitioned across multiple machines, you can use multiple CPUs to satisfy requests for information. The retrieval and update requests are decomposed automatically into sub-requests and executed in parallel on the database partition servers on each machine.
As an illustration of the power of processing in a partitioned database system, assume that you have 100 000 000 records that you want to scan in a single-partition database. This scan would require that a single database manager search 100 000 000 records. Now suppose that these records are spread evenly over 20 database partition servers; each database manager only has to scan 5 000 000 records. If each database manager scans at the same time and with the same speed, the time required to do the scan should be approximately 5% of that of a single-partition system handling this task.
User interaction with DB2 Extended Enterprise Edition is handled through one database partition server (node). This database partition server is known as the coordinator node for that user. The coordinator node runs on the same machine as the application, regardless of whether the user or application is remote or local. Any database partition server can be used as a coordinator node. You should consider spreading out users across database partitions servers to distribute the coordinator function.