the metadirectory while filtering out the routing tables for mr kent this flexible management control balances the issues of centralized control versus local autonomy depending upon a specific organizations information ownership and security requirements it allows u201c tops down u201d or u201c bottoms up u201d to accommodate a range of u201c geo political u201d scenarios further the metadirectory u201c md u201d may be a master slave or peer to the managed data sources which determines which entities may create modify and delete data objects through flexible attribute content control e g filtering configuration bidirectional flow is defined separate from the object creation modification and deletion definitions continuing with this example for illustration the human resources u201c hr u201d department may control the creation and deletion of certain attributes fields within the hr database while allowing the metadirectory to create or delete other certain attributes within the hr database as such for example in fig3 the hr staff may modify the name title and department attributes 31 for each employee while the metadirectory may make changes to the telephone and home address attributes 32 which may be propagated 33 from other department data sources perhaps the notes name and address book turning to fig4 a detailed view of one possible embodiment of the architecture of the joiner 10 is provided the joiner 10 may receive data object changes from metadirectory agents 42 associated with data sources u201c ds u201d 43 preferably in ldap change operation format the joiner 10 may also send changes to the data sources 43 each md agent 42 is provided with an appropriate interface such as an ldap interface 41 within the joiner 10 a local table 100 associated with.