databaseadministration.

htm; updated 4/10/01

Database Administration
Introduction.
The topics covered in these notes provide an overview of different
aspects of database administration.
You need to understand the function of the database administrator.
You will also study some basic concepts about database security,
recovery, transaction control, and concurrency control.

Functions of Data Administration vs. Database Administration.

Some organizations define different functions for the Data
Administrator than those of the Database Administrator.
Data Administration concerns the responsibility for serving as the
custodian of the firm's data. The Data Administrator:
resolves disputes that arise because data are centralized, but
shared among system users.
decides where data will be stored and managed.
maintains corporate wide data definitions and standards.
plans for database usage, analysis, design, implementation,
maintenance, and protection.
has a high level of both managerial and technical skills.
Database Administration involves the actual hands-on, physical
manage databases.
This is a very technical function that focuses on physical database
design issues including security enforcement, system performance,
and backup/recovery.
A Database Administrator (DBA) may administer several databases
simultaneously.
A DBA should have:
a broad technical background of hardware and operating systems
 as well as database programming.
knowledge of logical and physical issues.
good managerial skills.
knowledge of the Database Systems Development Lifecycle.
Database Systems Development Lifecycle.
The figure shown below gives the lifecycle of the stages of Database
Systems development.

The major functions of these various phases are summarized as

follows:
1. Database planning. Support overall organizational business
plan. Develop a data administration plan and design the database
environment.
2. Database analysis. Identifying data entities used by the
organization, relationships, and documenting them (ER diagram).
Define business rules and operational requirements.
3. Database design. Includes logical and physical design. Convert
ER diagram to relational tables. Design integrity controls.
4. Database implementation. First step is creation and initial
 load of the database - called populating the database. Resolve
data inconsistencies. Establish security controls. Establish
backup and recovery procedures. Train system users.
5. Operation and maintenance. Update database to keep it
current - done by application programs. Must include auditing
the database for tuning and reorganization.
6. Growth and change. Modify the database to reflect changes in
the organization. Monitor database performance for efficiency
and customer satisfaction.
DBMS Components.
The figure shown below provides a visual representation of the
various components that tend to comprise a DBMS environment.

The DBMS Interface may come in a variety of flavors - a plain telnet

session interface or a GUI application provided by the DBMS vendor
 such as Oracle's Developer and Designer products.
The DBMS has a number of components that are responsible for data
integrity, security, performance management, and backup/recovery as
well as components to allow a information systems specialist to build
a database application.
The DBMS engine interfaces between the Operating System and the
DBMS components to store/fetch data to/from the Database and the
Repository.
Additional Data Base Implementation Concepts.
Loading Data Bases:
Requires significant resources.
Must be scheduled.
Data Base must be Audited.
Combines data from existing master files.
May require special application programs to accomplish loading.
Must reconcile inconsistencies which will exist.
Specifying Test Procedures:
Careful testing prior to going on-line.
DBA establishes testing policies.
Backup/Recovery: Established by the DBA.
Growth and Change:
Change in size of the database is detected by analyses of storage
space utilization - may be automated.
Performance decreases.
Correction: Additional space allocation or reallocation -
unload/reload.
Changes in Structure:
Detected by new application requests that be supported.
Correction: Alter the database structure.
Changes in Usage Patterns:
Detect by performance monitoring system by degraded
 performance.
Correction: Reorganization or alter methods.
Organizing the DBA function.
Selecting the DBA:
Job is more managerial than technical.
Does not have to be a computer expert, but does to have
technical expertise.
Prefer someone from within the organization knows the
enterprise and its politics.

Transaction Integrity.
When several Physical Transactions must process together, such as
saving a Customer Order record to the Orders table and the related
Orderline records to the Orderline table, we term this a Logical
Transaction.
In this situation, either all of the physical transaction must process
or none of them must process.
If one physical transaction fails, we rollback the entire logical
transaction.
If all physical transactions succeed, we commit the changes the
database.
In modern database programming languages, we often implement
processing through the Active-X Data Object model - this is done in
Visual Basic.
The start of a transaction is marked by some command such as BEGIN
TRANSACTION or through use of a pre-defined method such as the
Visual Basic BeginTrans method of the Connection object used to
connect to a database.
If a transaction succeeds, the end of the transaction is marked
through the use of some command such as END TRANSACTION or a
 pre-defined method such as the Visual Basic CommitTrans method.
If a transaction fails someplace within the boundaries of the
transaction, then changes to the data source are rolled back (that is
undone). Some command such as ROLLBACK or a pre-defined method
such as the Visual Basic RollbackTrans method of the connection
object is used to rollback the logical transaction.
If the application ends or the database connection falls out of scope
before a transaction commits, all changes are automatically rolled
back.
Usually if a database connection is closed with the Close method
while a transaction is in progress, an error occurs.
Below is given an example of a logical transaction written in Visual
Basic.

Private Sub ArchiveInvoices()

' Either Archive all invoices or none of them.
ON Error GoTo ErrorHandler ' Turn on Error Handling
' Create the connection objects.
Dim strSQL As String
Dim cnAP As Connection
Dim cmdInvoices As Command
Set cnAP = New Connection
Set cmdInvoices = New Command
cnAP.CursorLocation = adUseClient
' Begin the transaction.
cnAP.BeginTrans
' Place commands here to move records to an archive table
' and delete them from the Invoices table.
cnAP.Open "Provider=SQLOLEDB;" & _
"Server=myserver;" & _
"Database=Accountspayable;" & _
"User ID=me;Password=XYZ"
cmdInvoices.ActiveConnection = cnAP
' Insert records into the Archive table from the Invoices table.
strSQL = "INSERT INTO InvoiceArchive " & _
"SELECT * FROM Invoices " & _
 "WHERE InvoiceTotal - " & _
"PaymentTotal - CreditTotal = 0"
cmdInvoices.CommandText = strSQL
cmdInvoices.Execute
' Now delete records from the Invoices table.
strSQL = "DELETE FROM Invoices WHERE " & _
"InvoiceTotal - PaymentTotal - " & _
"CreditTotal = 0"
cmdInvoices.CommandText = strSQL
cmdInvoices.Execute
' End the Transaction by committing it.
cnAP.CommitTrans
Exit Sub

Errorhandler:
' Display an error message and check to see if the edit mode is add
' for the recordset and if it is, then cancel the update to throw away
' the blank record. Rollback the transaction that failed.
DisplayerrorMessage
cnAP.RollbackTrans
If rsInvoices.EditMode = adEditAdd Or _
rsInvoices.EditMode = adEditDelete Then
rsInvoices.CancelUpdate
End If
End Sub

Concurrency Control.
Concurrent Access: Two or more users try to access the same data
simultaneously.
Interleaved Transactions (Lost Updates): Work through the example
shown below to understand what happened to the account balance.
Resource Locking: This involves locking data for one user if an
update is planned until the transaction commits. In order to lock
resources the DBMS needs to know two things:
1. Intent to Update on the part of the application program.
2. Transaction Boundaries - as defined by the logical
transaction boundary commands discussed in the previous section.
Lock Levels: There are several levels for locking records. These
include from the individual field up to the entire database.
The figure shown here eliminates the lost transaction update
problem.
 Note that User 2 must wait for User 1 to complete the
transaction before acquiring access to the customer account with
the intent to update.
Deadlock: This occurs when two different application programs acquire
resources simultaneously that the other program needs. Both programs
sit and wait on the additional needed resources.

Deadlock Prevention/Resolution: Use resource locking; Put one

transaction on hold until resources needed are free.
Versioning: Each application program/user is restricted to a view of
 the database at the time that the transaction starts, then when a
transaction modifies a record and the DBMS recreates a new record
version instead of overwriting the old record. Next the DBMS
manages the change by using rollback and restart of a transaction to
mesh various transactions together when they affect the same
record(s).

DATABASE RECOVERY.
There are four Basic Recovery Facilities. These include:
1. Backup. Whole Database duplication.
2. Journalizing. Maintains an audit train of transactions and
database changes. A Journal approach usually includes:
Transaction Log: Record of every transaction that processes.
Data Base Change Log: Before and after images of records.
3. Checkpointing. During the time when a Checkpoint record is
written, the DBMS refuses new transactions while those in
progress are processed and the journal files are brought up to
date and synchronized. The DBMS writes a checkpoint record to
the transaction log (this record includes information about non-
completed transactions), then writes main memory contents to
disk.
 An alternative approach: Complete all transactions in
progress.
Checkpointing is usually performed automatically.
4. Recovery/Restart Facility. Used to restore DBMS if failure
occurs.
Recovery from Failure:
1. Restore/Rerun. Reprocess a day's transactions against a backup
copy of data base.
2. Rollbackand Rollforward. The figure shown here provides a
diagram of the Rollback and Rollforward process.

Rollback: Use the database with changes and apply "Before

Images" from the Database Change Log to recover to an
earlier point in time.
Rollforward: Use the database without changes (earlier
version) and apply "After Images" from the Database Change
Log to recover to a later point in time.
 Types of Failures:
1. Aborted Transaction. Rollback is used to recover to a point in
time prior to the transaction. The transaction can be reapplied
if necessary or if the intent was to abort the transaction, then
the rollback resolves all issues.
2. Incorrect data. If incorrect data is entered into the system,
several approaches can be used to correct the data errors
including:
backward recovery if the error is found soon.
compensating transaction - an offsetting transaction, e.g.
if a deposit was incorrectly made to a bank account, a debit
against the account can be posted.
restart from checkpoint - rolls forward to the point of the
error from the last good checkpoint that was taken.
3. System Failure. If the system fails, e.g., power outage, upon
restarting the server, the DBMS recovery engine can use a
rollforward from the last good Checkpoint to recovery to the
point of failure.
4. Database Destruction. If the database is destroyed, e.g. a
server catches fire or a disk drive crashes, then forward recovery
from the last good backup can be used to restore to a new server.

End of Notes.