A device may correspond to a physical access controller in a distributed physical access control system. The device in a distributed system may include logic configured to detect a request from an application to access an application dataset, wherein the application dataset corresponds to a distributed dataset and determine whether the application dataset exists in the distributed system. The logic may be further configured to generate the application dataset in the distributed system, in response to determining that the application dataset does not exist in the distributed system, and send, to other devices in the distributed system, a request to join a dataset group that includes devices associated with the application dataset, in response to determining that the application dataset exists in the distributed system.