What is Data Administration

Data administration refers to the way in which data integrity is maintained within data warehouse.

Data warehouses are very large repository of all sorts of data. These data maybe of different formats.

To make these data useful to the company, the database running the data warehouse has to be configured so that it obeys the business data model which reflects all aspects of the business operation. These aspects include all business rules pertaining to transactions, products, raw materials management, human resource management, customer relations and all other including the tiniest of details.

A data warehouse is managed by one or more database administrators depending on the size of the data warehouse and the bulk of data being processed. The database administrator has many responsibilities. Among his important duties are creating and testing backups for database recoverability; verifying and ensuring data integrity by making sure tables, relationships and data access are constantly monitored; maintaining database security by defining and implementing access controls on the databases, ensuring that the database is always available or uptime is at maximum; performance tuning of the database system of software and hardware components; and offering end user support as well as coordinating with programmers and IT engineers.

Many database administrators who manage large data warehouses set certain policies so that the flow and data gathering, transformation, extraction, loading, and sharing will have as minimal problem as possible.

Data Access Policy refers to who has access privileges to what particular data. Certain data like administrative data can contain confidential data therefore access is restricted to the main public. Other data are freely available to all staff members of the company only so that they can view particular trends in the industry and they can be guided in coming up with needed innovations in their products or services.

Data Usage Policy is a guide so data will not be misused or just be distributed freely when it is not intended to be. The use data falls into several categories like update, read only or for external dissemination.

Most data warehouses have data integration and integration policy in which all the data are represented within a single logical data model where physical data models take data from. The database administrator should be extra keen with details in developing such model and all corresponding data structures and domains. All the needs of an enterprise data are considered in the development and future modifications of domains, values and data structures.

Data application control policies are implemented to ensure that all data taken from the warehouse are appropriately handled with care to ensure integrity, security and availability. It is not uncommon in business organizations where staff save data locally in division computers, discs and networks but these data are often saved in different kinds of applications like Word and Excel. Database administrators are responsible for access controls for different kinds of data formats so that the resources cannot be overloaded and data warehouses re protected from unauthorized modifications or disclosure which may result to data loss or loss of integrity.

Relational databases, which are the most widely used kinds of database today especially in very large warehouse, have very complex structures and need to be carefully monitored. They need to strictly obey the business rules of the enterprise as well as in sync with the all the data models. Investing in robust software applications, which can be available from a wide array of software developers and vendors, and hiring a highly trained and skillful database administrator can certainly be a company asset.