Craig Mullins'Database Administration, Second Editionis the definitive, technology-independent guide to the modern discipline of database administration. Packed with best practices and proven solutions for any database environment, this book fully reflects the field's latest realities and challenges. Drawing on his unsurpassed database experience, Mullins focuses on the problems today's DBAs actually face, and the skills and knowledge they simply must have. Mullins covers every aspect of the DBA role, including creating database environments; data modeling and normalization; design; performance; data integrity; compliance and governance; security; backup/recovery; disaster planning; data and storage management; data movement/distribution; data warehousing; database connectivity; metadata; tools, and more. This edition's updates and improvements include: * New coverage of "Big Data," database appliances, cloud computing, NoSQL, and other crucial trends * An all-new chapter on regulatory compliance and the DBA * New material on data breaches, auditing, data encryption, data retention, database archiving, data masking and sound metadata management policies * Coverage of important new features in leading databases (e.g. temporal data, multi-level security) * End of chapter questions that reinforce readers'understanding and can serve as project-oriented classroom assignments * New glossary and updated DBA "rules of thumb"