MAKERERE UNIVERSITY

FACULTY OF COMPUTING AND INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY

DATABASE SYSTEMS

ELAGU MAURICE JOSEPH 2017/HD05/3184U

NAKAWUKA JOSEPHINE N 2017/HD05/3189U
NAMIREMBE THEOPISTA 2017/HD05/3191U
NYAKATO JUDITH 2017/HD05/3193U
KYOBUTUNGI
NASSALI JANE 2017/HD05/1719U
MUDHASI GIOVANNI 2012/HD05/855U
DATABASE ADMINISTRATIVE OPERATIONS RUN
DURING OFF-PEAK HOURS
• DATABASE ADMINISTRATION
Database administration is the function of managing and maintaining
a database management systems (DBMS) software.

• Off Peak hours

This means a time when demand is less for the database or a period
of less than maximum frequency , demand, intensity, or use of the
database.
 Why should a database be maintained
• To avoid the drastic dropping of query performance.
• To prevent servers from running out of disk space.
• To enable database backup.
• To enable Logs Backup.
If implemented correctly, a database maintenance plan can help ensure
that the SQL Server's databases perform adequately and if there should
be a problem, provide the necessary backups to minimize the loss of
any data. Another benefit of implementing a database maintenance
plan is that it helps to prevent, or to catch early, many different kinds of
database-related problems. By being proactive with a good
maintenance plan, time spent troubleshooting problems after the fact
is often reduced.
 Maintenance Tasks
• Check Database Integrity
Data integrity is the maintenance of, and the assurance of the accuracy
and consistency of data over its entire life cycle.
This task involves performing an internal consistency check on the
databases to see if there are any problems with their integrity. While
this task is very resource intensive, it is critical that you perform it on a
regular basis, to ensure that your databases aren't damaged.
• History Cleanup
This task deletes historical data from the database, including historical
data regarding backup and restore.
If you don’t perform this task periodically then, over time, the
database can grow very large.
The database stores historical data about various activities, such as
details about backups, SQL Server Agent jobs, and Maintenance Plan
execution. If left unattended, the database can grow over time to a
considerable size, wasting disk space, and slowing down operations
that use the database. In most cases, this data does not need to be
kept for a long period, and should be removed
• Full Database Back Up
It is a full copy of your entire data set. Although full backups arguably
provide the best protection, most organizations only use them on a
periodic basis because they are time consuming, and often require a
large number of tapes or disk.
• Incremental backup
Because full backups are so time consuming, incremental backups were
introduced as a way of decreasing the amount of time that it takes to
do a backup. Incremental backups only backup the data that has
changed since the previous backup.
• Differential Database Back Up
A differential backup is similar to an incremental backup in that it starts
with a full backup, and subsequent backups only contain data that has
changed. The difference is that while an incremental backup only
includes the data that has changed since the previous backup, a
differential backup contains all of the data that has changed since the
last full backup.
• Transaction Log Backup
This backup contains all transaction log records that have been made
between the last transaction log backup or the first full backup and the
last log record that is created upon completion of the backup process.
• Shrink Database
Shrinking data can be done by removing empty pages. It is not advisable to
carry this out as it affects performance. It causes disk and as well as index
fragmentation and this can lead to performance issues. You are better off by
pre-allocating a big size for the data and log files so that auto growth will not
kick-in.
• Maintain Indexes
Indexes are those helpful pointers that allow you quick access to your data
pages in your database. When indexes are newly created, the structure is
nice and clean and everything works great by accessing your data via the
index instead of having to scan the entire table.
Over time these helpful indexes become fragmented and take up
unnecessary space and accessing your data pages is not as efficient as it was
when the indexes were first created. This is where index maintenance is a
critical DBA process that needs to be in place.
• Manage SQL Server Agent Jobs
SQL Server's built-in job scheduling tool is a great tool for automating your
backups, index rebuilds, integrity checks. In addition to this tool giving you
the flexibility to run these jobs during off hours you also need to make sure
you are monitoring job success and failure. This can be automated by setting
up SQL Mail (SQL 2000) or Database Mail (SQL 2005) and having failures be
sent out to operators that are configured. Time is needed on a daily basis to
check out the job failures and address the issue so that all jobs run
successfully.
• Database Statistics
• Defragmentation
 Order to execute tasks
• Logical Task Ordering.
A task such as Clean Up History can be performed at any point in the
plan but, for other tasks, there is a certain logical order in which they
should be performed.
• It makes sense to start the Maintenance Plan with the Check
Database Integrity task, because there is no point in running the rest
of the maintenance tasks if the integrity of your database is in
question.
• The Back Up Database (Full) should come before the Backup Database
(Transaction Log) task as we can't perform a transaction log backup
before we perform a full database backup. If we were to try, we
would get an error.
 Order to execute tasks
• If a Rebuild Index task is performed during the same maintenance
window as the Back Up Database (Full) task, then the Rebuild Index
task should be performed first. This way, should one need to perform
a restore of the backup, it will have its indexes defragmented and will
be ready for production.
• The Maintenance Cleanup task, if selected should be performed only
after the Back Up Database (Full) has been completed. This way, you
can ensure that a good backup has been made before deleting any
older backups.
 How often to run scheduled tasks
• Check Database Integrity – DAILY (or at least WEEKLY)
• Rebuild Index WEEKLY (DAILY is better).
• Back Up Database (Full) WEEKLY
• Back Up Database (Differential) EVERYDAY EXCEPT FULL BACKUP DAY
• Backup Database (Transaction Log) – HOURLY
• Maintenance Cleanup Task – WEEKLY
• Shrink Database DO NOT SCHEDULE – ON DEMAND ONLY
• Execute SQL Server Agent Job – DEPENDS
• History Cleanup – WEEKLY (or other)
 What can go wrong
• What happens when a drive fills up during daily differential backups?
• What if an index rebuild job runs abnormally long and interferes with
morning processing?
• How about if a data load process causes extensive resource
contention, bringing normal operations to their knees?
All of these are planned events, yet can cause considerable disruption
to the very processes we are trying to safeguard.