Database Services
TorTek Consulting is primarily focussed on Databases, SQL Server, Sybase and Oracle, but as this is a pretty wide subject area we will on this page break this down into the individual services we can offer, these are listed in the menu to the right. One thing to emphasise is that all consultancy work we carry out is in close collaboration with the exiting teams. This is partly to get up to speed as quickly as possible with the environment, procedures and policies in any particular location but also because it is vital to have the buy in of the people who will ultimately be supporting the changes we suggest and implement.
Featured Services
Database Health Check
The first thing we always do when contacted by a new client is to carry out a thorough health check and analysis of their current Database environment to identify any issues or risks.
This Health Check covers the following main areas:
– Dataserver configuration
– Host and Cluster configuration
– High-Level Performance monitoring
– Security audit
We then detail our findings in a report to the IT Management together with a series of recommendations.
Based on this report the client may decide to hire us to work alongside their current Database team, and developers, to remedy any issues identified in the report.
Database Design
Our Definition of Database Design is slightly more all-encompassing than the standard definition of “producing a detailed data model of database”.
At TorTek we consider all elements of the database from the underlying server configuration, including clustering, right through to the table structure and indexes and all parts in between. This will also encompass design of a robust and resilient backup and security model.
We are more than happy to undertake this work in isolation but we always prefer to work together with the in-house IT teams to build on their knowledge and prepare them to support the new configuration and understand plus agree with its structure.
Database Migration
TorTek have the tools and expertise to take care of Database migrations from Sybase and Oracle over to SQL Server.
This process includes full code remediation and thorough testing, working closely with the DBA and Development teams.
Performance Tuning
In a perfect world Performance Tuning is an action performed at regular intervals by the Database team but all too often, with limited resources available, it is neglected and forgotten about and instead the call goes out for more and more powerful machines with more memory and faster CPU’s.
Very often some fairly simple SQL code optimisation can lead to bigger performance improvements than even the costliest server upgrade can provide. This is certainly something we’ve experienced in the past where we’ve taken costly queries taken in excess of 10 minutes to run and optimised the code to run in half a minute or less. This might be an extreme example but in almost all databases we are able to achieve an improvement of at least 25%.
In addition to improving speed another important aspect of performance tuning is to spot any security issues or misconfigurations and in this way our performance tuning process acts as a kind of unofficial audit which can give an early heads up on serious issues.