Ways To Crash a Database

Aug. 15, 2009 - PRLog -- Taken together we think these seven areas hit on some of the biggest things that can go wrong with database systems.  Ignore these cautions at your own peril!
1. Don't Take Backups

Hardware failure is an ever present theme in the data center, so not taking good regular backups is one way to make sure this will be a calamity!  Hard drives fail, power fails, plugs get pulled, you name it.  

But that's not the only risk on the horizon.  Errant DBAs and developers delete data.  Yes, they do, and they delete columns, delete tables, even delete whole databases sometimes with the wrong command or misplaced typo!  Unfortunately, this type of risk can be higher and more common than you might guess.  If you haven't seen it before you might assume it won't happen to you.  Moreover, if you don't take regular backups from which you can recover a table, object, or whole database, you're sure to be ruined if that does occur.
2. Don't Watch the Error Logs

Error logs can be your early warning system.  Some messages indicate trouble to come, others indicate the first time something is a problem, which will surely grow in severity if ignored.  So definitely if you want your database systems to crash, ignore the log files.

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