Chapter 2

Creating Database Environment

Organizational strategy
Choosing a DBMS
Personal
Mini
Mainframe
Oracle
DB2
SQL Server
Informix
Adaptive Server Enterprise (Sybase)

DBMS Factors
Operating system support
Type of organization
Benchmarks
Scalability
Availability of support
technicians
Factors continued
Cost of ownership
Release schedule
references
TPC
Transaction Processing Performance
Council
Independent, not-for-profit that
manages and administers performance
benchmark tests
Terms
Clustering
Use of multiple computing systems
working together as a single, highly
available system
Shared disk
Share same devices
Shared nothing
Each has own private resources
Policies & procedures
Need to have policies for introducing
any new DBMS product
Hardware issues
Compatibility issues
Security issues
Installation Issues
Hardware requirements
Storage requirements
Catalogs
System database
Log files
Startup or control files
Work files
continued
Default databases
Temporary database structures
System dump and error processing files
DBA databases for monitoring, etc.
Memory requirements
Buffer pools data cache that reduce
physical I/O requests
Program cache (SQL, authorizations,
database structure blocks)
continued
Configuring the DBMS
Connecting the DBMS to supporting
infrastructure software
Networks
Transaction processing monitors
Message queues
Programming languages
System software
JCL
Web servers
Application servers
continued
Installation verification
Environments
Upgrading DBMS versions & releases
Version has many changes and new
features
Release has minor changes and not as
many new features
continued
Features and complexity
Complexity of environment
Reputation of vendor
Support policies (older versions)
Organization style
DBA staff skill set
Platform support
Fall back planning (if new version fails)
continued
Migration verification
DB Standards &
Procedures
Database naming conventions
Use standard abbreviations
May tie to application areas
Roles & responsibilities
Data standards
Overall policy for data & importance
Data ownership & stewardship
Standards continued
Rules for data creation
Metadata management policy
Conceptual & logical data modeling
Enterprise goals
Responsibility for creating and
maintaining logical models
Guidelines for tool usage
Data sharing policies
Standards continued
Instructions on how to document
physical database changes
Guidelines on communication between
data administrators and DBAs
Database Administration standards
System administration standards
Database application development
standards
Standards continued
Database security standards
Application migration and turnover
procedures
Unit testing
Integration testing
User acceptance testing
Quality assurance
education
Standards continued
Design review guidelines
Operational support standards
DBMS Education
DBMS overview 1 day management
level
Data modeling & database design
for DAs and DBAs
Database adm technical for DBAs,
SAs, and system programmers
Intro to SQL all DB users
Education continued
Advanced DQL DBAs and programmers
Database Programming application
programmers and systems analysts