A database can be perfectly designed—and still fail when storage fills up, backups cannot be restored, users have too much access, queries slow down, or an operational change creates an unexpected outage. Database Administration Fundamentals gives aspiring and working database administrators a practical framework for managing relational databases safely, systematically, and with confidence. Instead of focusing on memorizing commands, this book teaches you how to think like a DBA: understand the environment, observe the current state, investigate evidence, make the smallest justified change, verify the result, and document what happened. Inside, you'll learn how to: • Understand database architecture, environments, objects, sessions, memory, storage, and transaction logs • Manage accounts, roles, privileges, authentication, and least-privilege access • Monitor storage growth and plan database capacity before problems become emergencies • Work safely with administrative SQL, transactions, locks, blocking, and concurrency • Establish performance baselines and investigate CPU, memory, I/O, connection, and query problems • Understand indexes, execution plans, statistics, and practical query-tuning workflows • Apply fundamental database security, auditing, encryption, patching, and secure configuration practices • Design backup, restore, recovery, RPO, RTO, and disaster-recovery strategies • Build monitoring, maintenance, change-management, and operational routines • Troubleshoot common incidents involving availability, performance, storage, connections, backups, replication, access, and data integrity The hands-on exercises use PostgreSQL as the primary lab environment, while the underlying concepts are mapped to other major relational platforms, including MySQL, Microsoft SQL Server, and Oracle Database. Whether you're preparing for your first DBA role, expanding your systems administration skills, or looking for a structured way to build practical database operations knowledge, this book provides the mental models, workflows, exercises, and operational discipline needed to administer databases responsibly. Learn the technology—but more importantly, learn how to operate it safely.
