Database Maintenance

Database maintenance is an activity which is designed to keep a database running smoothly. A number of systems can be used to build and maintain databases.
Databases are used to maintain the information stored on it in a well organized and accessible format. Databases usually are not static as changes are constantly being made, because material is added, removed, and moved around. Over time, this causes malfunctioning in the database. Database maintenance is used to keep the database clean and well organized so that it will not lose its functionality.

A database that is not maintained becomes sluggish and you may start experiencing problems whenever you try to access any record.

Backing up the Data base

One important aspect of maintaining a database is the backing up of the data, so that, if any incident happens, there will be another copy available. Backing up database could be done every day, every week or on hourly bases.

Checking for Problems

Database maintenance also includes checking for signs of corruption, rebuilding indexes, removing duplicate records, and checking for abnormalities in the database. The goal is to keep the database operational, so that, you never need to think about maintenance issues.

Checking for Security Flaws

Many servers have extensive databases which are used on an internal network or Internet. This is very important to check for security flaws and other issues that could threaten the integrity of the database. This ranges from viruses to the records which are entered improperly.