Fundamentals of Database Management Systems, Second Edition

CHAPTER 11

DATABASE CONTROI ISSUES: SECURITY, BACKUP AND RECOVERY, CONCURRENCY

We'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. We will 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.
• List and describe the types of data security breaches.
• List and describe the types of data security measures.
• Describe the concept of backup ...