Almost every business will have one or more databases that are critical for their success. Modern word processing software has made the creation and use of these databases much less work intensive than in the past, while their paperless nature has offered many advantages over the physical copies of yesteryear. With the right management and structuring a database can serve as not only a valuable store of information but as an active marketing and analytics tool. To accomplish this you need a strongly protected yet accessible collection of data. Here are some tools for ensuring you get the absolute maximum from the information stored in a database.
Of primary importance when in charge of a major database is database security and database reliability. These two goals can be achieved by keeping a sufficiently up to date backup of database information by copying all changes and updates to an alternate location that is stored offline. This will ensure that if something happens to the original copy, you have a secondary source to rely on. Keeping it offline will limit the likelihood of experiencing data corruption. Reliability can also be improved through the use of key pieces of software that can be deployed in instances of malware attacks to limit their negative impact. Datanumen’s world renowned recover SQL can be applied after corruption of data has occurred to return the data to its original state. Having such an outstanding SQL recovery program on hand immediately after the first signs of a problem can significantly improve the recovery time needed to fix a database. Therefore it is of vital importance to have such software installed before you encounter a problem.
Once assured of your database’s safety, you can begin to make use of the information therein stored. Databases represent the ultimate proof that “the whole is greater than the sum of its parts”, and by examining the trends and similarities among your records using either basic analytics software or tried and true human analysis, long term patterns can be created. These patterns can be referenced in the future when trying to manage cashflow issues, accounting for increases in business, or optimizing strategy. The best database administrators will be able to offer significant insight as a result of database analysis.
We are living in the future, and with the wealth of tools available for properly storing, protecting, and using the information that business already have at their fingertips, business gains can be all but assured.
Alan Chen is President and Chairman of DataNumen, Inc., which is the world leader in data recovery technologies, including word recovery, excel repair, outlook repair and sql recovery software products. For more information visit www.datanumen.com.