Accessing and Analyzing Data with Microsoft Excel (Bpg-Other)

Many organizations and businesses begin their data collection and analysis efforts without taking stock of what data already exists or is being analyzed. This omission usually leads to duplicate or conflicting data collection and analysis. The following questions will help you coordinate data collection and analysis efforts, which will make database maintenance tasks easier overall.

• Have you completed an inventory of your data? In larger organizations, this information includes the names and network locations of all the organization’s data sources—the servers and the databases stored on them.

• From a general perspective, what purpose does each database serve? To preserve data and conserve resources, can any of these databases be archived to disk?

• Are the structure and relationships for each database documented? Is the documentation in electronic, paper, or some other format? After every significant change to a database’s structure, has the new structure been documented? Where is the documentation stored?

• Do you have enough RAM, processing speed, and hard disk space on each of the computers you use for storing databases and making data available to users? Does your hardware meet not only your current needs but your estimates for future data storage and retrieval needs? When was the last time you defragmented your computers’ hard disk drives?

• Do you have a plan in place to deal with possible data failure, such as nightly hard-disk backups. If any backups fail, how is your backup staff alerted? Are you using RAID (redundant array of independent disks), a system that distributes data over a group of disks to ensure that if one disk fails, no data is lost? (The “I” in RAID is sometimes considered an abbreviation for “inexpensive” instead of “independent.”)

After your organization begins collecting and organizing its data, the following items will help ensure that data is always accurate and available.

• Backup schedules should be posted next to each computer that requires its data to be regularly backed up. Emergency contact names, phone numbers, pager numbers, and e-mail addresses should also be posted next to each of these computers in case an unexpected data loss or failure occurs.

• After every backup, a person should attest in some manner that the backup has been successfully completed and physically verified for accuracy.

• There should be a regular schedule for other database maintenance tasks, such as checking index performance, event logs, transaction logs, and data audits. There should be a chain of responsibility for physically checking and verifying that these tasks were completed successfully and any anomalies should be forwarded back up the chain.

• To plan for theft and natural disasters, at least one additional copy of each backup should be regularly archived to physical media, such as a magnetic tape or CD, and the media should be stored in a secure location (such as a fireproof floor safe or a climate-controlled vault) separate from your place of business. Only a few individuals should have access to the off-site media, and then only for emergency data retrieval purposes.