Databases are not the dumb repositories of data that they used to be. Over the past decade they have become increasingly complicated, sophisticated and intelligent. In fact, it is often hard to draw a line between an application that uses a database and the database itself, as more and more of the business logic gets pushed down into the database or into one of the intervening tiers.

This has led to a trend away from managing databases as part of the system infrastructure and more to managing them as an integral part of the applications with which they interact. To manage a database properly you need to have an intimate knowledge of how the application works and the business objectives it is supporting.

As we deliver more and more operational and mission-critical systems we are finding that we are being asked more frequently to support and manage the databases our application use. This is the prime reason that we have a Database Service Group of experienced Database Administrators to support Microsoft SQL Server databases.

We provide a variety of services that are customised to meet your individual needs. The services can be regular or one-off, and reactive or proactive, or a combination of all of them.

Database Health Check

Over time the health of your database will deteriorate as it increases in size, becomes fragmented by the daily application activity, and gets used in ways that were not originally envisaged. The Health Check looks at various aspects of the database including the consistency of the data, performance monitoring, analysis of the system logs, tuning opportunities, security, backup and recovery procedures, and space management.

Depending on the mission-criticality of the database and the amount and nature of update activity, we recommend health checks from every month to at least once a year.

We will provide recommendations on short term and long-term actions to be taken to fix any immediate health problems and to preserve a healthy environment. Another one of the deliverables of the Health Check will be a maintenance and management schedule (either for your own administrators or for us to manage on your behalf) to ensure your database is kept fit and healthy in the future.

Database Priority Response

Priority Response ensures that in emergencies you can be talking to a knowledgeable DBA within 30 minutes of any major outage of your database, and progress will start to be made on rectifying any problem. Service levels will depend on the urgency of the problem and the hours that the service is provided. We support several databases that require a 24 by 7 service.

Database Planning

As all of the people in the group are experienced developers (as well as expert database administrators), they are able to make a valuable contribution to the design and development of new databases. Assistance with conversion from one database management system to another is another area we can make a real difference. Risk analysis and the development of a risk management plan also falls within this area, as does business continuity planning and disaster recovery planning and testing.

Database Management

We can manage your databases for you, ensuring that all of the daily, weekly and monthly housekeeping tasks are performed efficiently and effectively. Tasks such as database consistency checks, disk space management, performance monitoring, and application of service packs.