5 Things Your Database Administrator Wishes You Knew

In the business of database management, or any IT role, there is a lot that customers just don’t know. There are also many expectations they have that are unrealistic. If you’re working with a DBA, you can short-circuit a lot of problems and get to the solution sooner by understanding some basics about how databases work and what a database administrator can do for you.

1. Better hardware isn’t always a quick fix.

If your report is running slowly or it’s taking too much time to retrieve data, it’s tempting to throw more CPU or RAM at the problem and expect results. You want to purchase the hardware, plug it in and fix the problem. But that’s like putting a bigger engine into a car with a flat tire or broken axle. You need an optimized database to efficiently use the hardware’s power.

Inefficiently written queries, poor archiving or bad code can overwhelm the biggest server. So the first step in fixing a performance problem is to examine the process you’re trying to run, which data it’s accessing and how it’s accessing it. You may indeed need to upgrade your hardware, but it’s not the quick fix you may think it is.

2. Backups aren’t magic.

Should you backup your data? Absolutely! (Find more information on backups here.) But a backup can’t fix every problem, and backups have their limits.

A backup restores the full database from a certain time period. So if, for example, an employee accidentally dropped a table at 9 a.m., you can’t restore just that table and maintain the changes to the rest of the database for the rest of the day. Depending on how you have your transaction log backups set up, you can probably restore most of the changes. However, you can’t rely on a backup alone to fix an error without losing changes to the data since the incident occurred.

3. Nothing is an emergency … until it is.

Routine maintenance, software upgrades, recovery planning and testing, and patches are not emergency tasks and therefore are often put off or not completed at all. But an outage or, worse yet, a data breach, is an emergency that can be prevented by prioritizing routine maintenance.

I live in the Detroit area, and the recent water main break in the city, which forced residents out of their homes, ruined property and stranded vehicles, is an ongoing emergency that likely could have been prevented with proper maintenance. No one foresaw the aged water main giving way and the aftermath, which includes cleanup, insurance claims and more. But I’m willing to bet city officials wish they’d inspected and replaced the pipe sooner.

I’ve said it before (see SQL Server Disaster Recovery), but it bears repeating. It’s not enough to have a database recovery plan. You must test that plan and continue to modify it accordingly. As Mike Tyson said, “Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the face.” Don’t let your guard down and suffer the consequences.

4. Adding more indexes won’t always improve performance.

Indexing is a tool used to make queries faster by creating pointers to where data is stored. It categorizes data so it’s easier to find. However, if a query is not written in an efficient matter, indexes won’t always help. What’s more, indexes come with a cost. They take up space and create structures that need to be updated, and those things use database resources. So yes, indexes are useful tools, but adding more indexes isn’t always the answer when you want to improve performance. A good database administrator will first investigate the query and then consider indexing in the context of which indexes are already there and the database structure.

5. Time is money.

We’re sure you know that, but do you realize that the more information you give your DBA about any given problem, the less time he or she will have to spend troubleshooting? For example, what were you doing when the error or slow processing occurred? Which database were you accessing? Had you just implemented new code for that database? If it’s a process that’s taking too long, how long does it usually take? How long did it take this time?

You get the idea. The more information you provide, the less time your database administrator will spend potentially spinning his or her wheels and maybe even “fixing” something that isn’t the source of the problem. Give us all the information you have, and we won’t need to bill as much time. What’s more, we’ll have more time to troubleshoot issues that most affect your business.

Contact SQL Tailor Consulting Today

Whether you’ve already been doing your own database management and need some help from a qualified database administrator, are on the precipice of a big project and don’t want to go it alone or just need some key information to help you manage your own databases, SQL Tailor is here to help. Give us a call at (248) 919-8086 for a free consultation or book a consultation online.