Get Better Hold over Your DB

Managing a database is not an easy job, and requires all the help you can get. Check out these tools that let you monitor performance, generate reports, draw ER diagrams, and much more for your databases

Wednesday, September 05, 2007

A database is the backbone of any enterprise application. And most of these applications use database management systems (DBMS) to create, store and manage data. These DBMS software, like Oracle, IBM DB2, Sybase, Microsoft SQL Server or MySql are responsible for creation, updation, retrieval and storage of information in a structured format. Plus, it must also maintain data integrity, access control and security. Since there's so much to do in a database, the organization must dedicate a database administrator for the job, who has to ensure efficient and proper design of data in the database. If anything goes wrong with an application, the DBA has to use his skills to check whether the problem arose because of a fault in the database design or due to the application's logic. This is not an easy task, which is why (fortunately) there are database management tools that help a DBA keep a real-time check on the performance of DBMS. Not only do these tools provide for performance optimality but also help in the design and development of database on various DBMS platforms. The database management tools can broadly be classified into two categories: Production, and Development tools.

DBManager's Query Builder can be used to create queries by selecting the appropriate data object from the Objects panel. The result is displayed in the Output panel

Production DBA tools
A database administrator is required to maintain the production and test environments of an application development project. The tools used to manage the production environment are used to sort issues related with database performance, administration and database recovery.

The DBA can tune and improve the performance of a database by using such tools. The performance-monitoring tool helps a DBA gauge the efficiency and responsiveness of SQL queries, system parameters and database structures. Such performance monitoring tools run in the background and maintain a log of the database performance statistics and alert the DBA on occurrence of any problem. Some advanced tools can also take proactive steps to counter the problem so that database performance is not hindered at all.

The performance enhancement tools should monitor three aspects of a database application, which are database structure, the system itself and the application. These tools help manage the system resources perform optimally, while allowing you to analyze and optimize queries and run applications at top speed.

On a day-to-day basis a DBA requires some administration tools that help him in simplifying the tasks ranging from database object creation to database synchronization. In the absence of such administrative tools, the DBA would be required to write complex scripts for such intricate tasks that would consume time and would sometimes be error-prone too. Such administrative tools help DBA by automating some of the complex tasks and also help him in saving time.

Most of the DBMS applications provide basic backup and recovery features. However, these can't satiate the requirements of a DBA. He needs tools that can automate processes of backup and recovery and can also implement procedures for disaster recovery. The recovery tools help the DBA in such tasks. Some advanced recovery tools are also available that examine the database logs and then perform online SQL-based recoveries of the crashed or corrupted databases.

Adoption of such tools by DBAs that have automation capabilities, results in great improvement of the data availability and integrity, and hence improved performance of the database.

Development DBA tools
During the development of application database, the DBA focuses on building an effective database environment to support applications running in an organization. As the programs for an application are built, the DBA also has to look toward providing proper database structures that would be required by the application.

DBA tools step in here to support the development of database by providing features for designing E-R diagrams of the database and translating the logical diagram into physical implementation. Such tools also provide auto generated test data that would be used on the developed database to check primarily for data integrity and also for other purposes. The database developers can also use such tools for creating the procedures, functions or triggers for the database, by using their SQL editors.

In this article, we have covered some of the DBA tools that might help a DBA to develop databases and also for the maintenance of the production database. These tools are available as a package having a host of in-built functionalities. We also talk about a few which are available as individual function tool and help in database management or creation.

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