DATABASE CONTROL ISSUES: SECURITY, BACKUP AND RECOVERY, CONCURRENCY - Fundamentals of Database Management Systems - page 291

CHAPTER 11

DATABASE CONTROL

ISSUES: SECURITY, BACKUP

AND RECOVERY,

CONCURRENCY

W e've said that data is a corporate resource and that corporate resources must be
carefully managed. Different corporate resources have different management
requirements. Money must be protected from theft. Equipment must be secured against
misuse. Buildings may require security guards. Data, too, is a corporate resource and
has its own peculiar concerns that we have termed database control issues .Wewill
discuss the three main database control issues in this chapter. The first, data security ,
involves protecting the data from theft, malicious destruction, unauthorized updating, and
more. The second, backup and recovery , refers to having procedures in place to
recreate data that has been lost for any reason. The third, concurrency control , refers
to problems that can occur when two or more transactions or users attempt to update a
piece of data simultaneously. Certainly, these very important issues require well thought out
and standardized solutions. Indeed, entire books have been written about each one! Our
goal in this chapter is to introduce each of these topics, discuss why they are important,
explain what can go wrong, and highlight several of the main solutions for each.

OBJECTIVES

List the major data control issues handled by database management systems.

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List and describe the types of data security breaches. ■

List and describe the types of data security measures. ■

Describe the concept of backup and recovery. ■

Describe the major backup and recovery techniques.

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Explain the problem of disaster recovery.

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Describe the concept of concurrency control. ■

Describe such concurrency control issues and measures as the lost update problem,
locks and deadlock, and versioning.

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