The role of DBA is quite an important one even for a smaller organization. Many

Question

The role of DBA is quite an important one even for a smaller organization.

Many companies have employees with the title of "DBA". Other companies, especially smaller ones, often have "informal DBAs". Even if there is no one on staff with the official DBA title, it is still critical that the work of maintaining the database gets done. Companies that don't give their databases attention, usually end up losing data at some time or another.

A very important role of the DBA is to ensure that the data is protected and safe from hardware failures, fire, theft, etc.  

Class, what does it mean to "back up" your organization's data? How is this accomplished? What are "offsite backups" and why are they important?

Explanation / Answer

The DBA role naturally divides into three major activities: ongoing maintenance of production databases (operations DBA); planning, design, and development of new database applications, or major changes to existing applications (development DBA, or architect); and management of an organisation's data and metadata (data administrator). One person may perform all three roles, but each is profoundly different.

Modern organisations depend on several utilities - centrally managed services distributed across networks - the most common being electricity, water, and telephone services. Increasingly, organisations also depend on LAN and database services. Some organisations, such as airlines, with their reservation systems, or Amazon.com, with its Internet-based order system, are extremely sensitive to the availability of an underlying database service.

Established utilities such as telephone and power companies have evolved over time to maintain a relatively high degree of reliability and predictability - or at least, high by the standards of the database industry. They've done this by defining exactly what they need to deliver and then carefully monitoring actual delivery on a real-time basis, storing these measurements for review and management. Service outages are analysed with an eye to preventing their recurrence, and problems are anticipated and prevented more often than reacted to. Even natural disasters are planned for, and the response is swift, co-ordinated, and well rehearsed.

Related Questions

Navigate

• Browse (All)
• Browse T
• Subjects

Integrity-first tutoring: explanations and feedback only — we do not complete graded work. Learn more.