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What is Your Chosen Method of Execution?
By Eric Gross | March 20, 2008
As part of our lives we perform actions to databases all the time. Perhaps the database administrative workload breaks down in the following way in your organization:
- Installation of a new database - 10 times / month
- Upgrade of an existing database - 20 times / month
- Patch installation - 40 times / month
- Administration activities - 20 times /day (this encompasses all activities performed on servers running a database such as DBMS management, OS administration, and any other activities executed on database nodes)
These are just hypothetical numbers, but I would be willing to bet that in terms of execution frequency, Install < Upgrade < Patch < Other Activities. Here at GridApp we have been looking out for the database managers and maintainers by facilitating automation of the three “standardizable” components of workload - we have taken into consideration everything that is required to actuate those items. That is not to say the customer has no flexibility in those tasks - by letting the user (or administrator) specify every single input as well as define scripts that are run at well defined points in the flow of execution we enable the customer to accomplish all of their unique goals along with the common goal of standards-based provisioning.
Actions are simply an arbitrary piece of code that performs a particular task. The gains to be realized from migrating the method of execution of these activities from interactive sessions logged into the database to non-interactive activities available in a drop-down list are substantial. Management of these business-critical scripts is moved from .sql files sitting on everyone’s workstation to the security & manageability of Clarity allowing such essential characteristics such as version-control, our intrinsic security model - controlling both management of the action and execution of the action, and a tightly-coupled interface to collect the required inputs for the activity.
We will be extending Clarity to facilitate the everyday activities that are required in your environment. This is a monumental evolution in our execution of GridApp’s mission, and you will be seeing much more of our glorious content made available for customization in your environment. Content is king in this world, and you’ll continue to see why in the coming days.
Topics: Clarity Actions, Data Management, Database Automation