Business activity management of monitoring multiple instances of a business activity and navigating business activity data in a distributed system. A system includes a plurality of databases storing data relating to multiple instances of a monitored business activity. A user interface receives a request from a user for business activity data independent of which database stores the requested data. An activity monitoring component for navigating to one of the databases as a function of defined relationships to retrieve the requested business activity data. The user interface displays the retrieved data to the user based on the user's permission.