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Topic 4, A. Datum

Overview

General Overview

A. Datum Corporation has offices in Miami and Montreal.

The network contains a single Active Directory forest named adatum.com. The offices connect to each other by using a WAN link that has a 5-ms latency.

A. Datum standardizes its database platform by using SQL Server 2014 Standard edition.

Databases

Each office contains databases named Sales. Inventory, Customers, Products, Personnel, and Dev.

Servers and databases are managed by a team of database administrators. Currently, all of the database administrators have the same level of permissions on all of the servers and all of the databases.

The Customers database contains two tables named Customers and Classifications.

The following graphic shows the relevant portions of the tables:

The following table shows the current data in the Classifications table:

The Inventory database is used mainly for reports. The database is recreated every day. A full backup of the database currently takes three hours to complete.

Stored Procedures

A stored procedure named USP_1 generates millions of rows of data for multiple reports. USP_1 combines data from five different tables from the Sales and Customers databases in a table named Table1.

After Table1 is created, the reporting process reads data from a table in the Products database and searches for information in Table1 based on input from the Products table. After the process is complete, Table1 is deleted.

A stored procedure named USP_2 is used to generate a product list. USP_2 takes several minutes to run due to locks on the tables the procedure accesses.

A stored procedure named USP_3 is used to update prices. USP_3 is composed of several UPDATE statements called in sequence from within a transaction. Currently, if one of the UPDATE statements fails, the stored procedure continues to execute.

A stored procedure named USP_4 calls stored procedures in the Sales, Customers, and Inventory databases. The nested stored procedures read tables from the Sales, Customers, and Inventory databases. USP_4 uses an EXECUTE AS clause.

A stored procedure named USP_5 changes data in multiple databases. Security checks are performed each time USP_5 accesses a database.

You suspect that the security checks are slowing down the performance of USP_5.

All stored procedures accessed by user applications call nested stored procedures. The nested stored procedures are never called directly.

Design Requirements

Data Recovery

You must be able to recover data from the Inventory database if a storage failure occurs. You have a Recovery Point Objective (RPO) of one hour.

You must be able to recover data from the Dev database if data is lost accidentally. You have a Recovery Point Objective (RPO) of one day.

Classification Changes

You plan to change the way customers are classified. The new classifications will have four levels based on the number of orders. Classifications may be removed or added in the future.

Management requests that historical data be maintained for the previous classifications.

Security

A group of junior database administrators must be able to view the server state of the SQL Server instance that hosts the Sales database. The junior database administrators will not have any other administrative rights.

A. Datum wants to track which users run each stored procedure.

Storage

A. Datum has limited storage. Whenever possible, all storage space should be minimized for all databases and all backups.

Error Handling

There is currently no error handling code in any stored procedure. You plan to log errors in called stored procedures and nested stored procedures. Nested stored procedures are never called directly.

You need to recommend a solution to minimize the amount of time it takes to execute USP_2.

What should you recommend?

A. A database snapshot

B. A table variable

C. A temporary table

D. Snapshot isolation

View Answer

Answer: C

Explanation:

Scenario: A stored procedure named USP_2 is used to generate a product list. USP_2 takes several minutes to run due to locks on the tables the procedure accesses.