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Nodes members of the network, as well as applications connected to nodes in the network, are able to view all the monitored data as if it is a single and unified collection of data.
Practically, nodes view a virtual database based on the schema published by the shared metadata layer and can issue queries to the data as if the data is centralized.
In addition, a network can be configured such that nodes would push data to an aggregator node periodically, or based on events.
The query or monitoring can view an entire network as a single machine, or dynamically partition the network to satisfy the user view by criteria's determined by the users (and represented in the shared metadata policies).
For example: by locations, by type of software deployed, by owners etc.
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