SQL Server Database Administration (DBA) and Support

Our Approach

SQL Servers are good, but they don't look after themselves...

All may seem quiet on the server farm, but is dissent slowly building among the Users?  Are their applications and reports slowing over time?  Are your daily backups and transaction logs gaining weight?  Are your overnight batch procedures staying up late?

Just like you regularly service your car to prevent it breaking down, you also need to implement preventative measures to prevent your SQL Servers seizing up.

Order a performance assessment of your SQL Servers now and let TCS provide a detailed report on steps which could be taken to breath fresh life into your data environment.

For more information about our SQL Server Performance Assessment and SQL Server Support Services, please turn to the next tab.

Performance Monitoring and Tuning

Although your databases are usually well tested prior to "Go Live", it is not until your organisation uses them in anger when the real stress testing begins.

Queries may return data lightning fast and stored procedures may complete in a blink of any eye in test environments, but what about after 2 to 3 years in a production environment?  How will another million transaction records affect performance?  Will those queries and stored procedures still perform as well?

At the Server Level

We can help ensure that you have the right monitoring tools in place and running to capture any performance related issues that occur over an extended period of time.  Issues may not be apparent all day, every day, but bottlenecks may occur at specific times of the day or at certain times of the month, depending upon a combination of User numbers, volume of data and work load the server has at the time.

TCS can utilise a number of tools and implement specific monitors to help identify these issues and advise you on the best course of action.

At the Database Level

It may be that a particular application or set of reports which is linked to a known database is performing poorly.  What could be causing this?  TCS can help monitor usage of particular databases and help identify what is causing the issues.

Many issues can be overcome with careful planning of the distribution of database objects across the file system, to allow the multi-threaded features of SQL Server to access data concurrently.  If this is possible using your existing hardware, TCS can advise you on the best course of action to utilise this SQL Server feature that gives it it's competitive edge.

At the Object Level

When a more general performance issue is identified, the cause is often rooted in a small number of specific places, or 'objects', within the database that many processes access concurrently.  Fine tuning these specific places, such as table indexes, keys and stored procedures can dramatically improve the responsiveness of front-end applications.

TCS can monitor and report on the most commonly used objects in the database and provide tips, suggestions and 'fixes' for poor performing objects or those that can be reconfigured to allow more efficient access.

Data Integrity

Data Integrity is all about ensuring that the data stored in or extracted from your databases retains its meaning and accuracy.

Data Restructuring

Data doesn't sit still!  Not even your analysis fields or 'lookup' data.  The division of geographical regions may change, as might Budget Codes or department structures.  All these types of logical restructuring within your organisation need to be reflected within your data, so that when it comes to reporting, you can be sure that the extracted results are filtered and grouped properly.

Restructuring doesn't just end with the updating of Data tables.  End of month and end of year processes usually require the carrying-forward of outstanding invoices, balances and disputes.  Will these be automatically updated with the latest budget codes or will it be up to your staff to remember to update them when they are raised?

The application of new fee rates or cost rates to staff and contractors is also a regular task that needs to be performed and propagated accurately throughout all your data sources.  This data is normally collated in excel spreadsheets, so how do your staff ensure that it is accurately and efficiently added to your Accounts, HR and Project Management databases?

In these types of situation, TCS can help design, estimate the impact of, and implement restructuring of data within your datasources whilst ensuring that the integrity of your data and reporting is not adversely affected.  We use sophisticated and thorough techniques to identify and measure the impact of changes to ensure that no area is overlooked.

Data Correction

The reality is that sometimes people make mistakes.  Assigning the wrong budget code to transactions, duplicating customer or address details, updating the wrong set of product codes.  Depending upon the skill of the user and the functionality of the front-end, some of these mistakes can be corrected or reversed.  However, not all mistakes can, so it is the database administrator's job to ensure that any corrections that cannot be performed by Users are implemented at the back end.

When TCS provides support to your data environment, we are also providing an emergency service to ensure that mistakes and miss-entries are corrected promptly and accurately before they have a negative impact.

Contact us now to find out just how little a SQL Server support plan can be to ensure you have peace of mind over your organisations' data.

Mining and Extraction

One of the more common tasks we are asked to perform under the numerous maintenance and support contacts we have (covering many industry sectors from Accounting to Voluntary Organisations) is to perform specific data mining tasks to answer real business questions.

The idea of self-service reporting has been around for many years and attempts to re-launch it under that guise of "Enterprise Data Clouds" are wide spread on the internet.  But what is the truth behind "getting to the truth"?

The truth is that 90% of the work force are not experienced or trained to really know the intricacies and dependencies of your organisations' many data sources.  Real data mining is not just about pointing Excel at a database and extracting data into a spreadsheet.  It is about knowing the relationships, constraints and meaning of the data in not only each database, but each table and each field of data.

How can you be sure your in-house Users are giving you the right information, i.e. the truth?  Could those good-looking sales figures actually include cancelled transactions?  Could that current customer list be missing new Accounts, or could it include Accounts that have been marked as deleted?  What about that current project list?  Does it contain projects which are dormant or closed?

There are plenty of pitfalls to avoid when extracting and aggregating data into a summary report such as status fields not being utilised properly, many-to-many relationships between tables resulting in duplicate records in the results and over inflated totals, or even two or more tables joined together which result in missing records from the results.

All these pitfalls can be avoided by studying the database schemas and design documentation, but that is not the desire or remit of an everyday User.  This is where TCS can play an important part in your data mining activities, by helping you avoid these pitfalls having studied your databases, tables, relationships and data and knowing how they all work together to give you the real, honest truth.

Of course, sometimes the data requirements are a lot simpler than some of the more complex Knowledge Discovery exercises, and TCS can still offer a fast, efficient and accurate method of delivering the required results to you.

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