Database Maintenance

Abstract

At this point, you have now created a backup and performed a restore of the example database. You have also covered the different methods to back up and restore the database. However, there is no real plan for regular maintenance and detection and reporting of problems in the database strategy. Any jobs for backup of the database or transaction log that I have demonstrated so far are held as single units of work called steps. Not only that, but also there is nothing in place that will look after the data and indexes held within the database to ensure that they are still functioning correctly and that the data are still stored in the optimal fashion. Without a process that runs regularly, you would need to perform all of this by hand regularly and check the results each time. What a waste of time, and boring to boot!