Database challenges

Web Development
#1

Today’s large enterprise databases often support very complex queries and are expected to deliver nearly instant responses to those queries. As a result, database administrators are constantly called upon to employ a wide variety of methods to help improve performance. Some common challenges that they face include:

  • Absorbing significant increases in data volume. The explosion of data coming in from sensors, connected machines, and dozens of other sources keeps database administrators scrambling to manage and organize their companies’ data efficiently.
  • Ensuring data security. Data breaches are happening everywhere these days, and hackers are getting more inventive. It’s more important than ever to ensure that data is secure but also easily accessible to users.
  • Keeping up with demand. In today’s fast-moving business environment, companies need real-time access to their data to support timely decision-making and to take advantage of new opportunities.
  • Managing and maintaining the database and infrastructure. Database administrators must continually watch the database for problems and perform preventative maintenance, as well as apply software upgrades and patches. As databases become more complex and data volumes grow, companies are faced with the expense of hiring additional talent to monitor and tune their databases.
  • Removing limits on scalability. A business needs to grow if it’s going to survive, and its data management must grow along with it. But it’s very difficult for database administrators to predict how much capacity the company will need, particularly with on-premises databases.
  • Ensuring data residency, data sovereignty, or latency requirements. Some organizations have use cases that are better suited to run on-premises. In those cases, engineered systems that are pre-configured and pre-optimized for running the database are ideal. Customers achieve higher availability, greater performance and up to 40% lower cost with Oracle Exadata, according to Wikibon’s recent analysis PDF

Addressing all of these challenges can be time-consuming and can prevent database administrators from performing more strategic functions.