Database Maintenance
Database maintenance is a set of ongoing administrative tasks and procedures performed to ensure a database system operates efficiently, reliably, and securely over time. It involves activities like optimizing performance, backing up data, applying updates, and monitoring for issues to prevent downtime and data loss. This practice is critical for maintaining data integrity, availability, and the overall health of database systems in production environments.
Developers should learn and apply database maintenance to ensure their applications remain performant and resilient, especially in production where data is critical. It is essential for preventing performance degradation, data corruption, and security vulnerabilities, with use cases including regular backups for disaster recovery, index rebuilding to speed up queries, and patching to fix bugs or security flaws. This skill is particularly important for roles involving database administration, DevOps, or full-stack development where long-term system stability is a priority.