02 — Exam Map & High-Yield Targets
Weight: 6% Fundamentals · prioritize decision distinctions and operating logic over vendor detail.
Must know cold
- definition, primary driver, and three goals;
- Technology Support vs Operations Support;
- database / instance / schema / node / abstraction;
- Production / Application / Procedural / Development DBA and NSA;
- centralized / distributed / federated / non-federated + loose/tight federation;
- ACID / BASE / CAP;
- Production / Development / Test / Sandbox boundaries;
- archive / purge / retention / CDC / replication / sharding / resiliency / recovery;
- business-criticality-based continuity, off-site copies, and tested recovery;
- performance = availability + speed and evidence-driven tuning;
- four metric families + Data Audit vs Data Validation.
Must distinguish
| Cluster | Deciding rule |
|---|---|
| Database / Instance / Schema | stored collection / running DBMS context / organized objects |
| Production / Application DBA | production reliability / application DBs across environments |
| Procedural / Development DBA | stored DBMS logic / design + sandbox/development |
| DBA / NSA | database structures/operations / storage-array infrastructure |
| Centralized / Distributed | one system/place / multiple nodes |
| Federated / Non-federated | autonomous constituent DBs / centrally controlled components |
| ACID / BASE | transaction reliability / availability + eventual consistency posture |
| BASE / CAP | processing posture / distributed partition trade-off |
| Production / Test / Sandbox | live service / formal validation / experiment-POC |
| schema-on-write / schema-on-read | structure before load / interpretation on consumption |
| row / column orientation | OLTP-like whole rows / OLAP-like selected columns |
| Archive / Purge / Retention | retain elsewhere / irreversible remove / duration requirement |
| CDC / Replication | deltas / copies |
| Mirroring / Log shipping | near-immediate sync / periodic log application |
| Resiliency / Recovery | continue despite errors / restore after failure |
| Audit / Validation | compliance-method criteria / quality-usability acceptance |
Must apply
- choose Development as first normal patch environment; Production last;
- select DBMS by workload/transaction requirements, not fashion or feature count;
- set restore priority by business criticality;
- refuse to call backups sufficient until restore capability is tested;
- protect/mask restricted Production-derived test data;
- diagnose performance before structural redesign;
- choose full refresh vs delta/CDC/replication/sharding based on the actual problem;
- map a measurement question to Storage, Performance, Operational, or Service metrics.
Selective memorization
- ACID: Atomicity · Consistency · Isolation · Durability
- BASE: Basically Available · Soft state · Eventual consistency
- CAP: Consistency · Availability · Partition tolerance
- SCM: configuration identification · change control · status accounting · audits
- replication: active/passive; mirroring/log shipping
- performance service = availability + speed/response
Lower-priority recognition
Know specialized APIs, legacy technologies, and niche database/storage examples by defining use case, not exhaustive vendor syntax or DBA implementation detail.
Seven readiness checks
- Explain Technology vs Operations Support.
- Distinguish all five administrator roles.
- Reconstruct ACID, BASE, CAP and what question each answers.
- Classify Development, Test, Production, Sandbox.
- Distinguish retention/archive/purge, CDC/replication, mirroring/log shipping.
- Explain why backup creation is not proof of recoverability.
- Name four metric families and distinguish audit from validation.
Eight changed-fact drills
- selecting/installing a DBMS → Technology; backup/recovery after install → Operations;
- production failover → Production DBA; one app across environments → Application DBA;
- autonomous combined view → Federated; central control → non-federated distributed;
- POS commit/rollback → ACID; stale-but-available acceptable → BASE posture;
- formal UAT/performance → Test; isolated POC → Sandbox;
- retrievable old records → retention/archive; authorized irreversible disposition → purge;
- near-current secondary → mirroring; 15-minute lag/log intervals → log shipping;
- contractual/method compliance → audit; quality/usability acceptance → validation.