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As a database administrator you must periodically carry out certain administration tasks. Many of these administration tasks can be automated.

Procedure

The following table is an example for scheduling periodic administration tasks. Depending on how large you configured your database and how much of its capacity is in use, you may have to carry out these administration tasks more or less frequently than in this example.

Periodic Administration Tasks (Example)

Task

Frequency

Comments and Recommendations

More information

Complete data backup

On each productive day or according to your backup schedule

The more recent the last data backup, the quicker you can restore the database after a system failure.

Every restore requires a complete data backup as a starting point.

Backing Up Data

Incremental data backup

Optional

Once to multiple times a day, according to your backup schedule

If you cannot afford a complete data backup every day, then you should carry out at least an incremental data backup on each productive day.

Incremental data backups are cumulative: if you recover your database, only the most recent incremental backup is used.

See above

Log backup

Once to multiple times a day, depending on how much data was changed in the database and according to your backup schedule

Only necessary if automatic log backup is switched off.

Backing Up Log Entries

Archiving backup files

Regularly

Depending on how much space is available for your log backups

Only necessary for log backups on data carriers of the FILE type

Archiving Backup Files

Checking database structures

Once a week

We recommend that you check the database structures at times when the database load is low, or using a system copy.

Checking Database Structures

Updating SQL optimizer statistics

Once a week

For SAP systems refer to SAP note 927882

Outside SAP systems, we recommend that you activate the automatic statistics update

SQL Optimizer Statistics

SAP Note 927882

More Information

Automating Administration Tasks

If you use the database in a production system, we recommend that you continuously monitor the database, see Monitoring Databases