Database administration and automation

Database administration is the function of managingand maintaining database management systems (DBMS)software. Mainstream DBMS software such as Oracle,IBM DB2 and Microsoft SQL Server need ongoing man-agement. As such, corporations that use DBMS softwareoften hire specialized IT (Information Technology) per-sonnel called Database Administrators or DBAs.

1 DBA Responsibilities Installation, configuration and upgrading of

Database server software and related products.

Evaluate Database features and Database relatedproducts.

Establish and maintain sound backup and recoverypolicies and procedures.

Take care of the Database design and implementa-tion.

Implement and maintain database security (createand maintain users and roles, assign privileges).

Database tuning and performance monitoring.

Application tuning and performance monitoring.

Setup and maintain documentation and standards.

Plan growth and changes (capacity planning).

Work as part of a team and provide 24x7 supportwhen required.

Do general technical troubleshooting and give cons.

Database recovery.

2 Types of database administra-tion

There are three types of DBAs:

1. Systems DBAs (also referred to as Physical DBAs,Operations DBAs or Production Support DBAs):focus on the physical aspects of database admin-istration such as DBMS installation, configuration,patching, upgrades, backups, restores, refreshes,performance optimization, maintenance and disas-ter recovery.

2. Development DBAs: focus on the logical and de-velopment aspects of database administration suchas data model design and maintenance, DDL (datadefinition language) generation, SQL writing andtuning, coding stored procedures, collaboratingwith developers to help choose the most appro-priate DBMS feature/functionality and other pre-production activities.

3. Application DBAs: usually found in organizationsthat have purchased 3rd party application soft-ware such as ERP (enterprise resource planning)and CRM (customer relationship management) sys-tems. Examples of such application software in-cludes Oracle Applications, Siebel and PeopleSoft(both now part of Oracle Corp.) and SAP. Appli-cation DBAs straddle the fence between the DBMSand the application software and are responsible forensuring that the application is fully optimized forthe database and vice versa. They usually manageall the application components that interact with thedatabase and carry out activities such as applica-tion installation and patching, application upgrades,database cloning, building and running data cleanuproutines, data load process management, etc.

While individuals usually specialize in one type ofdatabase administration, in smaller organizations, it is notuncommon to find a single individual or group perform-ing more than one type of database administration.

3 Nature of database administra-tion

The degree to which the administration of a database isautomated dictates the skills and personnel required tomanage databases. On one end of the spectrum, a systemwith minimal automation will require significant experi-enced resources to manage; perhaps 5-10 databases perDBA. Alternatively an organization might choose to au-tomate a significant amount of the work that could bedone manually therefore reducing the skills required toperform tasks. As automation increases, the personnelneeds of the organization splits into highly skilled workersto create andmanage the automation and a group of lowerskilled line DBAs who simply execute the automation.Database administration work is complex, repetitive,time-consuming and requires significant training. Since

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Database_management_systemhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oracle_databasehttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_DB2https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_SQL_Serverhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_technologyhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Database_administratorhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Database_designhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Database_tuninghttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_modelhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_Definition_Languagehttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_Definition_Languagehttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stored_procedurehttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third-party_developerhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Application_softwarehttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Application_softwarehttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enterprise_resource_planninghttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Customer_relationship_managementhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oracle_Applicationshttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PeopleSofthttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_componentryhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Process_managementhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skilled_worker

2 7 SEE ALSO

databases hold valuable and mission-critical data, compa-nies usually look for candidates with multiple years of ex-perience. Database administration often requires DBAsto put in work during off-hours (for example, for plannedafter hours downtime, in the event of a database-relatedoutage or if performance has been severely degraded).DBAs are commonly well compensated for the long hoursOne key skill required and often overlooked when select-ing a DBA is database recovery (under disaster recovery).It is not a case of if but a case of when a databasesuffers a failure, ranging from a simple failure to a fullcatastrophic failure. The failure may be data corruption,media failure, or user induced errors. In either situationthe DBA must have the skills to recover the database toa given point in time to prevent a loss of data. A highlyskilled DBA can spend a few minutes or exceedingly longhours to get the database back to the operational point.

4 Database administration tools

Often, the DBMS software comes with certain tools tohelp DBAs manage the DBMS. Such tools are callednative tools. For example, Microsoft SQL Servercomes with SQL Server Enterprise Manager and Ora-cle has tools such as SQL*Plus and Oracle EnterpriseManager/Grid Control. In addition, 3rd parties suchas BMC, Quest Software, Embarcadero Technologies,EMS Database Management Solutions and SQL Mae-stro Group offer GUI tools to monitor the DBMS andhelp DBAs carry out certain functions inside the databasemore easily.Another kind of database software exists to manage theprovisioning of new databases and the management ofexisting databases and their related resources. The pro-cess of creating a new database can consist of hundreds orthousands of unique steps from satisfying prerequisites toconfiguring backups where each step must be successfulbefore the next can start. A human cannot be expected tocomplete this procedure in the same exact way time af-ter time - exactly the goal when multiple databases exist.As the number of DBAs grows, without automation thenumber of unique configurations frequently grows to becostly/difficult to support. All of these complicated pro-cedures can be modeled by the best DBAs into databaseautomation software and executed by the standard DBAs.Software has been created specifically to improve thereliability and repeatability of these procedures such asStratavia's Data Palette and GridApp Systems Clarity.

5 The impact of IT automation ondatabase administration

Recently, automation has begun to impact this area sig-nificantly. Newer technologies such as Stratavia's Data

Palette suite and GridApp Systems Clarity have begunto increase the automation of databases causing the re-duction of database related tasks. However at best thisonly reduces the amount of mundane, repetitive activitiesand does not eliminate the need for DBAs. The intentionof DBA automation is to enable DBAs to focus on moreproactive activities around database architecture, deploy-ment, performance and service level management.Every database requires a database owner account thatcan perform all schema management operations. This ac-count is specific to the database and cannot log in to DataDirector. You can add database owner accounts afterdatabase creation. Data Director users must log in withtheir database-specific credentials to view the database, itsentities, and its data or to perform database managementtasks. Database administrators and application develop-ers can manage databases only if they have appropriatepermissions and roles granted to them by the organizationadministrator. The permissions and roles must be grantedon the database group or on the database, and they onlyapply within the organization in which they are granted.

6 Learning database administra-tion

There are several education institutes that offer pro-fessional courses, including late-night programs, to al-low candidates to learn database administration. Also,DBMS vendors such as Oracle, Microsoft and IBM offercertification programs to help companies to hire qualifiedDBA practitioners. College degree in Computer Scienceor related field is helpful but not necessarily a prerequi-site.

7 See also

Column-oriented DBMS

Data warehouse

Directory service

Distributed database management system

Hierarchical model

Navigational database

Network model

Object model

Object database (OODBMS)

Object-relational database (ORDBMS)

Run Book Automation (RBA)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SQL*Plushttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quest_Softwarehttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embarcadero_Technologieshttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EMS_Database_Management_Solutionshttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strataviahttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_Palettehttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GridApp_Systemshttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strataviahttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_Palettehttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_Palettehttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GridApp_Systemshttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Column-oriented_DBMShttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_warehousehttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Directory_servicehttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distributed_database_management_systemhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hierarchical_modelhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Navigational_databasehttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_modelhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Object_modelhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Object_databasehttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Object-relational_databasehttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Run_Book_Automation

3

Relational model (RDBMS)

Comparison of relational database management sys-tems

Comparison of database tools

SQL is a language for database management

8 External references A set theoretic data structure and retrieval lan-

guage. SIGIR Forum (ACM Special Interest Groupon Information Retrieval) 7 (4): 4555. Winter1972.

Thomas Haigh (June 2006). Origins of the DataBaseManagement System (PDF). SIGMODRecord(ACM Special Interest Group on Management ofData) 35 (2).

This article is based on material taken from the Free On-line Dictionary of Computing prior to 1 November 2008and incorporated under the relicensing terms of theGFDL, version 1.3 or later.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relational_modelhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_relational_database_management_systemshttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_relational_database_management_systemshttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_database_toolshttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SQLhttp://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1095495.1095500http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1095495.1095500https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_Interest_Group_on_Information_Retrievalhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_Interest_Group_on_Information_Retrievalhttp://www.tomandmaria.com/tom/Writing/VeritableBucketOfFactsSIGMOD.pdfhttp://www.tomandmaria.com/tom/Writing/VeritableBucketOfFactsSIGMOD.pdfhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SIGMODhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SIGMODhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_On-line_Dictionary_of_Computinghttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_On-line_Dictionary_of_Computinghttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_Free_Documentation_License

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