Database Administration

Book excerpt: Database Administration, Second Edition, is the definitive, technology-independent guide to the modern discipline of database administration. Packed with best practices and proven solutions for any database platform or environment, this text fully reflects the field’s latest realities and challenges. Drawing on more than thirty years of database experience, Mullins focuses on problems that today’s DBAs actually face, and skills and knowledge they simply must have. Mullins presents realistic, thorough, and up-to-date coverage of every DBA task, including creating database environments, data modeling, normalization, design, performance, data integrity, compliance, governance, security, backup/recovery, disaster planning, data and storage management, data movement/distribution, data warehousing, connectivity, metadata, tools, and more. This edition adds new coverage of “Big Data,” database appliances, cloud computing, and NoSQL. Mullins includes an entirely new chapter on the DBA’s role in regulatory compliance, with substantial new material on data breaches, auditing, encryption, retention, and metadata management. You’ll also find an all-new glossary, plus up-to-the-minute DBA rules of thumb.