The availability of a distributed database management system is defined as the fraction of transactions that are sucessfully executed out of all transactions that are submitted to the system over a given time interval. Several variables that determine availability are addressed. These determinants are categorized as transaction traffic, reliability measures, data distribution, concurrency control, and fault tolerance. An evaluation expression for availability is presented in terms of these determinants. The method proposed in this paper is shown to provide several advantages compared to previous methods.