A reading path for database administrators
This page is for database administrators who take over the database of an Exponential site and want to learn it in a sensible order. Follow the steps in sequence; skip the engines you do not run.
Contents
- The first hour
- Your engine
- The first day
- Before the first upgrade
- Before the first incident
- When the site grows
The first hour
- Database administrators: start here (5 minutes).
- The database layer in one page (10 minutes).
- Supported engines and versions (10 minutes).
- The DatabaseSettings reference and Reading and changing database settings (15 minutes).
- Open Setup > System information on your site and find the Database card (System information) (5 minutes).
- Securing the database (15 minutes).
Your engine
| Engine | Read |
|---|---|
| SQLite 3 | SQLite 3 for DBAs, Write queue, Maintenance, Permissions |
| PostgreSQL | Setting up PostgreSQL, Operating PostgreSQL |
| MongoDB | Setting up MongoDB, Limits and operations |
| MariaDB, MySQL | Setting up, utf8mb4 and InnoDB, Read replicas |
| Oracle | Setting up Oracle, Connections and tuning, Maintenance commands |
About an hour per engine.
The first day
- Database accounts and privileges and Character sets and collations.
- Backups per engine and Restoring a database; then test a restore.
- Housekeeping: cronjobs and queue tables and Sessions in the database.
- Monitoring the database; set up the alerts.
- The tables a database administrator should know.
Before the first upgrade
- Upgrades and the SQL update files.
- Applying the 6.0.15 database update.
- Checking the schema after an upgrade.
- The .dba schema format and Schema tools.
- The administrators' guide Upgrading, to know what the rest of the team does.
Before the first incident
- Troubleshooting database errors.
- Database error codes and messages.
- When something goes wrong.
- Checklists for database administrators: print the restore list.
When the site grows
- Performance and scaling and Finding slow queries.
- The SQL query cache and The built-in search index tables.
- Choosing an engine and Moving a site to another engine.
- Clustering: DFS and its metadata database.
- Reviewing extension SQL for every engine.
Keep Database FAQ and the Glossary at hand.
Related pages
- Database administrators: start here
- Hosting companies: start here
- Database support
- Free documentation: this page is free to copy, translate and improve under the GNU FDL 1.3.
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