Database Management/Database Administration

This lesson introduces database administration concepts and the role of the database administrator (DBA).

Objectives and Skills

Objectives and skills for this lesson include:

• Understand the role and activities of the DBA in database administration
• Research DBA employment requirements and benefits
• Research common DBA responsibilities, including database licensing, hardware requirements, monitoring, security, and data recovery options

Readings

1. Wikipedia: Database administration
2. Wikipedia: Database administrator
3. Wikipedia: Database security
4. Wikipedia: Database activity monitoring
5. Wikipedia: Backup

Multimedia

1. YouTube: Database Administration
2. YouTube: Database Administrator
3. YouTube: A Day in the Life of a Database Administrator or DBA

Activities

1. Review BLS: Database Administrators and Architects. Identify the current average salary, education requirements, and job outlook for database administrators.
2. Review Salary.com: Database Administrator - Entry. Identify the salary range and typical benefits for entry-level database administrators.
3. Research licensing costs for your selected DBMS. Include both server and client access licenses, if applicable.
4. Research minimum hardware requirements for your selected DBMS.
5. Research performance monitoring options for your selected DBMS.
6. Research options for securing your selected DBMS.
7. Research backup and restore options for your selected DBMS.

Lesson Summary

• Database administration is the function of managing and maintaining database management systems (DBMS) software.
• There are three types of database administrators including: System DBAs, Development DBAs, and Application DBAs.
• Database administrators (DBAs) use specialized software to store and organize data. The role may include capacity planning, installation, configuration, database design, migration, performance monitoring, security, troubleshooting, as well as backup and data recovery.
• Database security concerns the use of a broad range of information security controls to protect databases (potentially including the data, the database applications or stored functions, the database systems, the database servers and the associated network links) against compromises of their confidentiality, integrity and availability. It involves various types or categories of controls, such as technical, procedural/administrative and physical.
• Database activity monitoring (DAM) is a database security technology for monitoring and analyzing database activity. DAM may combine data from network-based monitoring and native audit information to provide a comprehensive picture of database activity. The data gathered by DAM is used to analyze and report on database activity, support breach investigations, and alert on anomalies. DAM is typically performed continuously and in real-time.
• Backups have two distinct purposes.
  • The primary purpose is to recover data after its loss, be it by data deletion or corruption.
  • The secondary purpose of backups is to recover data from an earlier time, according to a user-defined data retention policy, typically configured within a backup application for how long copies of data are required.
• Backups represent a simple form of disaster recovery and should be part of any disaster recovery plan, backups by themselves should not be considered a complete disaster recovery plan.

Key Terms

database activity monitoring

A database security technology for monitoring and analyzing database activity.

database administrator

Use specialized software to store and organize data

disaster recovery

Involves a set of policies, tools and procedures to enable the recovery or continuation of vital technology infrastructure and systems following a natural or human-induced disaster.

See Also

• TutorialCup: Database Administrators and Users
• Oracle: Database Administrator Guide
• Watt: Database Design - Chapter 14 (Database Users)

References

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