If you are working as a DBA you may find that developers will ask you to create a database having given little thought to what the database will be used for or the impact the database could have to the resources or security of the hosting environment.

If you find yourself in that situation I would suggest you walk the requester through the questionnaire from the previous article “How to determine where a new database should be deployed“.

Once you have completed that process I would then suggest that an official request to deploy a new database be made using the DATABASE REQUEST FORM provided here link. If you have a change request process I would still suggest you use this form. Having a database specific request form covers more relevant and vital information.

This is a fairly high level request form with most of the technical details still to be defined by the DBA but it provides documentation of the request and states the requester’s initial expectations and requirements.

Following the database deployment if the actual footprint of the database does not match up with what was agreed the form will confirm if the requested resources were under specced or misleading.

The form is outlined as below.

Some important points the form clarifies:

There’s a difference between requester and owner. If the database runs into any problems you don’t want to be contacting the temporary intern that requested it instead of say the department head.

The application the database supports. Most of the time the database name will have some tie-in to the application name but maybe it does not. For instance the database could be named something generic like Reporting which could be the back end for really anything.

The form asks the requester to prepare a profile for the database. I could have named this section “who is your daddy and what does he do?”. If the requester states they are looking for a OLAP reporting database but operationally it’s running as a OLTP transactional database, that could make a big difference in terms of the resources provided for the database and underlying hardware.

Possibly most importantly the form helps to establish the likely impact of the new database with the Resource Impact Estimation section. For example if a requester asks for 10 Gb of space and states they expect space usage to increase by 5 Gb a year but the disk has lost a terabyte in the first few months the form will clarify who got their numbers wrong.

The user and groups section will clarify who should have access to the database. Effectively everything related to data and data access should be okayed by a compliance officer to confirm everything is GDPR compliant. This form will assist the compliance officer in establishing that.

The Business continuity & Upkeep section is really the domain of the DBA but it helps to get requester input on these matters. For instance establishing maintenance windows.

If you have any additional questions you feel should be on the form please feel free to contact me and I’ll add them.