Database Management
With regard to the management of the institution's database(s), the supplier should be required to allocate agreed storage to the production ('live running') database and software components; plan and advise on future database and system storage requirements; control and monitor user access to the production database; maintain the security of the database(s); monitor the performance of the production database and system components; ensure that the database backups are performed in keeping with agreed back-up and recovery requirements; carry out 'housekeeping' tasks, such as de-fragmentation of the various objects that make up the database(s); and refresh database(s) to provide agreed database instances (e.g. development, training and testing).
In addition to the production database instance being required for live running of the system, multiple other copies of all or sub-sets of the production data will be required at least for development, training and testing purposes.
There are costly overheads associated with managing and maintaining a large number of database instances and it is unlikely that any institution will require all of these instances at all times. Further, not all instances will require full copies of the Production database, and all of them will have different provisions for update authority, data ownership, access control and back-ups.
