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The Importance of the Database and DBA – Part I
When trying to understand the importance of a database, and the need for a skilled Database Administrator, you should ask yourself the following questions.
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Where do your applications retrieve data from?
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Where do your applications store data?
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Where do the application transactions take place?
The answer to the above questions should all be the same – the database. Based on the single answer to these questions, it should be clear that databases are central to enterprise applications. The data stored within the database is central to key decision making within organizations.
Wouldn’t you want to have your database designed and nurtured by a Database Administrator who truly understands enterprise data modeling and complex relational database structures? You have likely thought about the right person being someone that has core knowledge in the design and development of reliable and scalable database solutions. In order to survive in the current market environment, organizations should consider both security and scalability as critical design principles. Scalability and security are not things that can or should be added to the application design process at a later point in time. These things should be the foundation for all organizations that are growing.
The most common approach to addressing the database engineering challenges are to pull experiences from existing development staff. While skilled developers can create decent data models and structures, they typically are doing so with Object Oriented thinking and not in relational terms. In order to design high performing databases that are reliable, secure and scalable you will need a DBA on the team who thinks in relational terms and truly understands enterprise database concepts. The DBA sees the business and needs for scalability from a completely different view then other members of the team.
Database Administrators are not only necessary from the design standpoint, they are also instrumental in the “care and feeding” of the database over time. A DBA should be an integral part of the team and work with Network Administrators, Developers and the operational team in order to ensure the database reliability and availability meet the needs of the organization.
Let’s look at a simple example for the need for a DBA on a team in regards to database backups. While instituting database backups is not a difficult task it does require thought in regards to database availability and data recovery. As the typical response to database design is to label the most talented Developer as the DBA, the Network Administrator sees a similar label when dealing with backups. At this point in time, you might want to ask yourself how much a Network Administrator really knows about SQL database recovery and the organizations needs for data reliability inside an enterprise relational data model. While Network Administrators are very knowledgeable regarding the servers, disk availability, etc. they normally know just enough about database recovery to get into some trouble.
Through the organization, everyone agrees, the database and data contained therein is critical and central to the successful operation of the organization. Options to have a senior DBA review the backups, recovery plan, data model, tuning, performance, security and integrity for each database is essential to database health. You need your data to be available and accurate when you need without exception.
We encourage you to learn more about the options Foster Townsend creates to help in this area. Organizations do not need to hire full-time DBA’s to reduce risk in these areas. Foster Townsend has resources and processes in place to cover any area of DBA support. Please review our Support Services – DBA Support area for more information. We will continue to cover the Need for a DBA topic as well as additional technical topics here.
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