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do all day? Bob Watkins outlines some of the basic duties of a DBA.
Editor's note: This article was originally published March 9, 2006.
It's been said that the database administrator (DBA) has three basic tasks. In
decreasing order of importance, they are: protect the data, protect the data, and
protect the data.
Although data integrity is clearly the #1 job (who cares if the database is available
or fast if the data isn't good), the DBA has many other jobs as well. Here's a list of
the actual tasks that a DBA performs. (Some duties are common to all DBAs, and
others are only required in some database environments.)
General tasks
understand the particular security model that the database product uses and how to
use it effectively to control access to the data. The three basic security tasks are
authentication (setting up user accounts to control logins to the database),
authorization (setting permissions on various parts of the database), and auditing
(tracking who did what with the database). The auditing task is particularly
important currently, as regulatory laws like Sarbanes-Oxley and HIPAA have
reporting requirements that must be met.
Storage and capacity planning The primary purpose of a database is to store and
retrieve data, so planning how much disk storage will be required and monitoring
available disk space are key DBA responsibilities. Watching growth trends are
important so that the DBA can advise management on long-term capacity plans.
Performance monitoring and tuning The DBA is responsible for monitoring the
database server on a regular basis to identify bottlenecks (parts of the system that
are slowing down processing) and remedy them. Tuning a database server is done
on multiple levels. The capacity of the server hardware and the way the operating
system is configured can become limiting factors, as can the database software
configuration. The way the database is physically laid out on the disk drives and the
types of indexing chosen also have an effect. The way queries against the database
are coded can dramatically change how fast results are returned. A DBA needs to
understand which monitoring tools are available at each of these levels and how to
use them to tune the system. Proactive tuning is an attitude of designing
performance into an application from the start, rather than waiting for problems to
occur and fixing them. It requires working closely with developers of applications
that run against the database to make sure that best practices are followed so good
performance will result.
Troubleshooting When things do go wrong with the database server, the DBA
needs to know how to quickly ascertain the problem and to correct it without losing
data or making the situation worse.
Special environments
In addition to these basic responsibilities, some DBAs need special skills because of
how the database is being used.
High availability With the advent of the Internet, many databases that could have
been available only during the day are now required to be available 24 hours a day,
7 days a week. Web sites have changed from static, pre-defined content to
dynamically created content, using a database to create the page layout at the time
a page is requested. If the Web site is available 24x7, so must the underlying
database. Managing a database in this environment requires an understanding of
which types of maintenance operations can be done online (with the database
available to users) and which must be scheduled for a maintenance "window" when
the database may be shut down. It also requires planning for redundant hardware
and/or software components, so that when one fails, others will keep the total
system available to its users. Techniques like online backups, clustering, replication,
and standby databases are all tools the DBA can use to ensure higher availability.
Very Large Databases (VLDBs) As companies have found more and more uses for
database technology, they tend to save more data. Also, the type of data stored in
databases has changed, from structured data in neat rows and columns to
unstructured data such as documents, images, sound files, and even fingerprints.
Both trends have the same result: larger databases. Managing a VLDB requires
special skills of the DBA. The time required to do simple operations like copying a
table can be prohibitive unless done correctly. The DBA needs to understand
techniques like table partitioning (Oracle), federated databases (SQL Server), or
replication (MySQL) to enable a database to scale to large sizes while still being
manageable.
Data Extraction, Transformation, and Loading (ETL) In data warehouse
environments, a key task is efficiently loading the data warehouse or data mart with
large volumes of data extracted from multiple existing production systems. Often
these production systems have different formats than the standardized definitions
in the data warehouse, so data must be transformed (or "cleansed") before loading.
Extracting the data may or may not be the DBA's responsibility in a given company,
but making sure what is extracted is useful is, and the DBA is a key part of the
team.
(1) Creates and maintains all databases required for development, testing,
education and production usage.
(2) Performs the capacity planning required to create and maintain the
databases. The DBA works closely with system administration staff because
computers often have applications or tools on them in addition to the Oracle
Databases.
(4) Install new versions of the Oracle RDBMS and its tools and any other tools
that access the Oracle database.
(5) Plans and implements backup and recovery of the Oracle database.
(7) Implements and enforces security for all of the Oracle Databases.
(9) Puts standards in place to ensure that all application design and code is
produced with proper integrity, security and performance. The DBA will perform
reviews on the design and code frequently to ensure the site standards are
being adhered to.
(10) Evaluates releases of Oracle and its tools, and third party products to
ensure that the site is running the products that are most appropriate.
Planning is also performed by the DBA, along with the application developers
and System administrators, to ensure that any new product usage or release
(14) Assists with impact analysis of any changes made to the database objects.
(18) The DBA has ultimate responsibility for the physical database design.
(3) Ability to perform both Oracle and also operating system performance
monitoring and the necessary adjustments.
(10) Experience and knowledge in migrating code, database changes, data and
menus through the various stages of the development life cycle.
(12) A sound knowledge of both database and program code performance tuning.
DBA Responsibilities
The job of the DBA seems to be everything that everyone else either doesn't want
to do, or doesn't have the ability to do. DBAs get the enviable task of figuring out all
of the things no one else can figure out. More seriously though, here is a list of
typical DBA responsibilities:
DBA Qualifications