1. A system for processing a query on a database comprising: a database catalog comprising database table locality information, record locality information, execution engine information and characteristics of the system components; a query optimizer receiving the query and accessing the database catalog to create a query execution plan comprising locality-based database operations; a central database operation processor providing a first execution engine executing the query execution plan by performing at least a portion of the locality-based database operations and distributing at least a portion of the locality-based database operations as a subplan; a second database operation processor providing a second execution engine executing the subplan received from the central database operation processor; a storage unit storing at least a portion of database tables and records connected to at least one of the central database operation processor and the second database operation processor; a data communications network connecting the central database operation processor to the second database operation processor; and wherein at least one of the database operations can be executed on either the first execution engine or the second execution engine.