Three considerations for database standardization

To reduce IT complexity and improve data quality, enterprises always want to integrate their businesses to fewer database platforms. However, experts believe that before the database standardization project, pay attention to cultural and technical issues.

For the first time such work, enterprises need to ensure that the IT department has enough technical reserves, and only database technicians are far from enough. According to experts, IT employees need to understand how to select a database standard to meet the needs of related applications, servers, workflows and business processes.

"If your administrator is only familiar with a single field, it is likely to cause information islands. It is best for a DBA to understand the operating system and hardware, tony Iams, vice president of the consulting firm Ideas International, said: "A comprehensive technical reserve is a key factor in the project's achievements."

Pay attention to policy and corporate culture issues

When enterprises decide to integrate all their applications under a single database standard, it is likely to cause policy confusion between departments. Although the call for integrated services has been high, it is a huge challenge to solve the different policies and cultures between independent departments in an enterprise.

Iams said: "policies are actually very difficult because they are beyond the scope of technical solutions and involve more subjective factors, different people will always have various preferences."

Compatibility issues

The biggest motivation for enterprises to standardize and integrate databases is to solve the confusion caused by different database systems supporting different applications. However, end users point out that standardized integration does not mean that it will not cause confusion. In some cases, there may be more complicated cases.

Enterprises need to run the most suitable application software based on different business needs, which are sometimes designed based on specific database technologies. As a result, more and more database platforms are emerging as business needs change constantly.

This is why enterprises need to consider the issues from the perspective of application migration and compatibility during database standardization and integration. "If your key applications do not support new database standards, your plan will be blank," Iams said ."

Consulting Company C.L. carter's data system architect Christopher Carter said that in addition to considering technical issues, you also need to consider the cost and time of Migration During database integration projects, assess the feasibility of the project as a whole. He said: "During application migration, there must be a lot of manpower and material costs. You need to consider what the ROI for this project will be in the next few years. Generally, if a project does not return within a year or two, I think you need to reconsider whether the project is feasible ."

Note the differences between SQL Systems

According to experts and technicians, companies that want to migrate their source systems from one database platform to another need to understand the differences between mainstream SQL systems.

Database architect Nathan Allan said: "One of the skills of database standardization is to be well prepared. In different database products, there may be very subtle differences, sometimes just semantic differences ."

For example, one difference between SQL database management systems is that they process null characters in different ways. In some systems, null strings represent null, and some are not. It seems to be a very small difference, but if you do not pay attention to it, it may cause unexpected downtime.

The biggest difference among various SQL systems is the time and date functions. After more than a decade of constant changes, SQL standardization has reached a relatively mature stage.

The identification and quantification of system applications affected by database integration can cause great problems, which is why preparation requires sufficient time and effort. Allen said: "In many cases, you may intervene in the system from many aspects, so the impact of system migration is actually the project ."

1. Database standardization and Paradigm
2. What is Oracle standardization?