Overview:
Let us understand the term Database administrator by observing an activity most of us indulge in.
Let me explain the concept by mapping it to a common activity -The activity is withdrawing money from a bank.
While you are withdrawing money, there are quite a few things happening in the background.
Thousands of other customers may be doing the same thing, and this, is not affecting your session.and this is not affecting you in any way.
ACCESS to your data is IMPORTANT where banking is concerned.
You could ask your bank for past account transactions, and the bank has has an obligation to provide it.
Since banking is a frequent activity, performance is taken for granted.
When you are at an ATM, for example, you expect your transaction to be completed in a short period of timequickly.
Now let us look at things from a banks perspective.
What we are seeing here is a vast quantity of data that the bank has to store and provide its customers..
This data is stored on one or more DATABASES. But it is as we saw, it's much more than just DATA..
There is the concept of concurrency where data can be accessed by multiple customers.
The concept of data security, where your data is protected
The concept of performance where data is accessible in acceptable time frames. data can only be seen by you.
Performance and high availability, where data is always available.
Data and the this extra functionality around data are is made possible by a DBMS or data base management system.
And the people responsible for managing a DBMS are DBA's or database administrators.
What does a DBA Do?
Now any company that needs to store vast quantities of data will use one or more databases.
Thus, databases are present in a wide spectrum of companies.
And not surprisingly these companies recruit DBA's to look after this data.
DBAs are involved in a variety of activities:
a. They install and maintain databases.
b. They upgrade databases to newer versions when available
c. They take backups of databases so data can be recovered if a system crashes
d. They also export data across databases
Monitoring databases is another component of a DBAs average day.
They run tests to measure the health of a database.
For example databases can fill up which means that no more information can be added.
When this happens work can grind to a halt.
Similarly performance can become an issue resulting in Calls to Customer Service Agents which companies never want.
So this means that a DBA has to also be a problem solver
DBAs also plan and implement security measures to safeguard databases.
As a customer you would not want your banking or medical records to fall into wrong hands.
Lastly DBAs spend a substantial amount of time in meetings with company management and vendors.