1. A database management system comprising: a) a network interface, for receiving database queries from two or more client applications, the client applications operating on two or more user client computers, providing at least one connection into the system for each such client application; b) a group of two or more operational nodes for executing the queries as database operations, each operational node implemented as a logical collection of software components that execute on one or more physical machines; c) client applications establish connections with the database and interact with the system via commands expressed in a query language; d) where some of the commands are data definition language (DDL) commands that provide the ability for a client to create one or more objects, and specify metadata associated with those objects; and e) at least one client application specifies a set of augmentation rules that are read, processed, and used to augment or modify such commands received, said specification indicating whether the augmentation rules being provided are to be used for the connection associated with that client application, or for all client connections, or for some other connection scope.