Article Review. Big Data and Database Technologies

Big Data and Database Technologies
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Big Data and Database Technologies
In recent decades, the amount of data that is available has grown tremendously, including in electronic form. Nonetheless, extracting meaning and important insights from that data, as well as converting knowledge into action, remains a challenge. Despite these challenges, big data has a massive potential to radically change the way organizations conduct businesses and use their data. Big data and database technologies remain critical in shaping the running of businesses and particularly significant for business executives and IT professionals to understand their application and management in a business environment. Multiuser databases, for instance, add monumental value to companies that create and utilize them. Databases are critical elements of organizational operations and also pivotal component of a company’s value. In database management, certain techniques and operational plans have to be made on time. For instance, in case of database failures and disasters, effective backup and recovery plans, techniques, and procedures are critical. Overall, big data creates a potential to develop data-driven companies that collect, store and analyze data for enhancing organizational performance, productivity and profitability as well as resolve challenges and develop innovative solutions.
While multiuser databases generate value to businesses that create and use them, they also create difficult challenges for the same organizations. These challenges can be attributed to various causes, including the complexity of designing and developing the databases since they support many overlapping user views. Additionally, structural changes in the databases due to varying clientele and user preferences can also create difficult challenges to individual organizations (Kroenke, Auer, Vandenberg, and Yoder, 2018). Therefore, database administration is essential in resolving privacy and security concerns in relation to specific applications and processes that affect a particular database. Database administration tasks include managing the database structure, control concurrent processing, managing processing rights and responsibilities, developing database security, providing for database recovery, managing the database management system, and maintaining the data repository (Kroenke et al., 2018, p. 456). The issues of managing (large) multiuser (enterprise) databases are discussed below in brief.
The first task of database administration involves managing the database structure. Managing the database structure includes taking part in the initial designing and implementation of the database, controlling and managing changes to the database (Kroenke et al., 2018). The database administrator is usually part of the initial database design and implementation process. The database administrator is involved in the requirements study, participates in evaluating the alternatives, including the database management system to be used, and is a critical contributor in the designing of the database structure. The database administrator is usually the manager who monitors the work in large organizational applications performed by technical experts in database development (Kroenke et al., 2018). As the initial step in database development, database structures created are then filled with relevant data as per organization requirements.
The second task in database administration is concurrency control. Control concurrent processing involves taking concurrency control measures that are taken to ensure that the work of one user does not unsuitably influence the work of another user (Kroenke et al., 2018). Further, concurrency control measures ascertain that database users get the same result when processing, regardless of whether a user is processing alone or along with other users. However, Kroenke et al. (2018) note that since no concurrency control technique or mechanism is ideal for every circumstance, designing multiuser database applications requires developers to choose among trade-offs. One solution to the inconsistencies of concurrent processing is called resource locking and involves preventing multiple applications from obtaining copies of the same record when the same record is about to be changed.
Database security is another task of database administration. Kroenke et al. (2018) note that database security ensures that authorized activities are performed by authorized users at authorized times. Achieving this complex task requires that the database development team is able to determine and establish the processing rights and responsibilities of all the users during the initial requirements specifications phase of the project. Kroenke et al. (2018) add that these security requirements are enforced using the security features contained in the database management system as well as the security features written in the application programs. Therefore, responsibilities go hand in hand with processing rights, allowing only authorized organizational personnel can perform specified and authorized tasks at authorized times. However, Kroenke et al. (2018) note that processing responsibilities cannot be enforced by the database management system or the database applications. Therefore, the processing responsibilities are encoded in manual procedures and explained to users during systems training.
Developing database security involves several processes that ensure that the database is secure. For instance, the first step is to ensure that the database management system is always run behind a firewall. However, the database management system, the database itself, all database applications should always be secure regardless of whether the firewall fails or note (Kroenke et al., 2018). Besides running behind a firewall, other guidelines for securing the database ma...