SYBASE SESSION 8-DOCUMENT

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DEFINING SYSTEM ADMINISTRATION AND NAMING
STANDARDS & ADMINISTERING VERY LARGE SQL
SERVER DATABASES

Chapter Includes:

SQL Server Environment Approach

Defining Environments

Development Environment

Test Environment

Production Environment

Naming Standards

VLDB

Managing Database Dumps and Loads

Checking Database Consistency

Data Maintenance

Data Partitioning Options

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SQL Server Environment Approach:
One must approach development an SQL Server environment in a consistent
fashion or each development project is destined to waste time performing
certain activities. The approach should be focused on providing flexibility for
the developer and the structure for the database administrator.

Defining Environment:
When developing production software, you should assume there would be a
development environment, at least one test environment, and a production
environment.
For each environment, we must determine the following.
Is the environment supported by a separate SQL Server, or does it share the
SQL Server with some other function.
How are the databases organized on the SQL Server? Is there a database per
environment rather than an SQL Server per environment?

Development Environment:
The development environment requires the maximum flexibility for
developers while enabling the necessary control structures to provide for
consistent promotion of code.

Test Environment:
Typical environments include development, system test, volume/stress test,
user acceptance test, and production.
Because there are several test environments, this book considers them
conceptually as a single environment called “test”.
Several test environments used in the software development life cycle(SDLC).
We will test for function or performance.
Functional Testing is used to confirm that elements of an application or
several distinct applications can work together.
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 Performance testing is conducted to verify how the database performs under
peak numbers of users, data size, or both.

Production Environment:
The production environment is the last and most important environment in
the SDLC.
It is under maximum control of database administration, and all defined
production control must be implemented and observed.
The environment should have the following features.
The SQL Server and database hardware used for the production should be
dedicated.
An initial load of data may be required.
Logins and users are the actual production users.

Naming Standards:
Naming standards can be broken into two areas.
SQL Server names and operating system names
SQL Server names are the names you specify in the SQL Server environment.
Operating system names are the names you specify for files and directories.
For the person retrieving or accessing an object, the name should completely
define its content without ambiguity.

Indicators:
An indicator is a string of characters embedded in a name to indicate
something about the type of object.
They are often used to indicate an object type.
Example:

currdate_def : it is used as a name for a default setting a column to the

current date and time.

VLDB:

VLDB stands for Very Large Database.

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 It depends on how we define very large a fixed size such as 2GB etc
When a database restore time exceeds a certain threshold
A VLDB is any database in which standard administrative procedures or design
criteria fail to meet business needs due to the scale of data.

VLDB Maintenance Issues:

VLDB's present a number of issues for the database administrator. Here are
top issues regarding maintenance of a VLDB
Time required to perform dumps and loads
Time required to perform necessary database consistency checks.
Time and effort required maintaining data.
Purging/ archiving data.
Managing purged partitioned databases.

Managing Database Dumps and Loads:

Database dumps are necessary to provide recoverability in case of disaster.

We need database dumps to disk mirroring to protect

Here are the following problems

Physical server failures

SQL server failure
Database failure
Table/ index corruption
Controller/ disk failure

User error

The main problem with the database dumps and VLDBs is the duration of the

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 database dumps.
Dump time is proportional to the amount of the data in the database.

Checking Database Consistency:

The database consistency checker is a systems administration tool that

verifies pointers internal to a database and its structures.
It is highly recommended that dbcc checks be run prior to any database
dump to avoid dumping a corrupt database.
The dbcc commands will typically lock user tables, indexes, system tables
when running.

Data Maintenance:

In addition to performing database dumps and checking database

consistency on a VLDB, there are other data maintenance commands that need
to be performed on a database.

They include

Update Statistics
Archiving Data

Updating Statistics:

SQL Server uses index statistics to choose the correct access path at query
optimization time.
The DBA will need to update statistics when the data distribution changes to
ensure valid information is contained on the statistics page.

Purge/Archive Procedures:

The data in a VLDB may grow to a size approaching or exceeding the

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 available database size. At this point the decision will need to be made to
expand the database or in order to purge or achieve data to free up space.
When purging or archiving data, a number of issues need to be addressed.

They are:

Locking implications
Performance implications
Storage or retrieval of archived data.

Data Partitioning Options:

When dealing with VLDBs it may become necessary to partition the database
due to SQL Server size limitations or in order to meet backup and recovery or
data maintenance requirements.
There are two primary ways of Partitioning databases.
Vertical partitioning
Horizontal Partitioning

Vertical Partitioning:

It is the process of drawing imaginary lines through a database schema, and
placing individual tables in different databases.

Horizontal Partitioning:

Horizontal partitioning of data breaking up tables into logical subsets and

placing them into the same or different databases.
The benefit of vertical partitioning over horizontal partitioning is that it
simplifies administration because all data for a given table will be in a single
table in a single database.
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 Another advantage of vertical partitioning is that you can hide the vertical
partitioning from the end user or application developer through the use of
views. Advantage of horizontal partitioning in a VLDB is to separate active data
from historical or inactive data.

1) What are the issues to be considered in developing an environment?

2) Give the disadvantages and advantages of the following

Shared database and shared objects and data

Individual database and individual objects and data

3) Explain the following

Test environment

Production environment

Naming standards

Abbreviation standards

4) What are indicators in naming standards? Give the possible indicators for the
following

Database

Server

View

Trigger

Primary key constraint

5) Give the syntax for naming the cursors

6) What is VLDB? What are the VLDB maintenance issues?

7) What are the steps to develop to develop a VLDB backup?

8) What is meant by database checking consistency?

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Book For Reference

Book: Sybase SQL Server 11

by

Ray Rankins

Jeffrey R. Garbus

David Solomon

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