A federation is a set of two or more repositories bound together to facilitate the management of a multi-repository distributed configuration. Federations share a common name space for users and groups and project to the same connection brokers.

Global users, global groups, and global permission sets are managed through the governing repository, and have the same property values in each member repository within the federation. For example, if you add a global user to the governing repository, that user added to all the member repositories by a federation job that synchronizes the repositories.

One enterprise can have multiple repository federations, but each repository can belong to only one federation. Repository federations are best used in multi-repository production environments where users share objects among the repositories. We do not recommend creating federations that include production, development, and test repositories, because object types and format definitions change frequently in development and test environments, and these must be kept consistent across the repositories in a federation.

The repositories in a federation can run on different operating systems and database platforms. Repositories in a federation can have different server versions; however, the client running on the governing repository must be version-compatible with the member repository in order to connect to it.

To create or modify federations, you do not have to be connected to a repository in the federation. To add a repository to a federation, your Documentum Administrator connection broker list must include a connection broker to which the particular repository projects.

Before you set up a repository federation, refer to the appropriate chapters in the Distributed Configuration Guide.