Database Engineering & Data Systems Topics
Database design patterns, optimization, scaling strategies, storage technologies, data warehousing, and operational database management. Covers database selection criteria, query optimization, replication strategies, distributed databases, backup and recovery, and performance tuning at database layer. Distinct from Systems Architecture (which addresses service-level distribution) and Data Science (which addresses analytical approaches).
Storage and Disk Management
This topic addresses design and operational management of storage subsystems and disk resources. Candidates should understand trade offs between performance redundancy and capacity, common redundancy and performance approaches such as mirroring striping and parity, selection of redundancy level based on workload, disk partitioning and logical volume management, file system considerations, storage tiering and data placement strategies, snapshotting and cloning, and how backups interact with live storage. Be prepared to discuss monitoring disk health and failure indicators, rebuild impact on performance, capacity planning, input output operations per second throughput and latency considerations, and security controls such as encryption and access restrictions.
Database Administration and Data Management
Operational responsibilities and best practices for maintaining data stores and data integrity. Topics include administration of relational databases such as PostgreSQL MySQL and Oracle as well as non relational databases when appropriate, schema design and normalization tradeoffs, indexing and query optimization strategies, backup verification and restore procedures, replication and high availability topologies including leader follower and multi master approaches, sharding and horizontal partitioning for scale, capacity planning and storage optimization, transactional consistency and isolation considerations, and security and compliance controls such as encryption auditing and retention policies.
Application Database Interaction and Performance
Understanding how applications interact with databases, connection pooling, prepared statements vs. dynamic SQL, batch processing, N+1 query problems, and coordination with development teams on performance.
Database Backup and Recovery
Focuses on database specific backup and recovery techniques and trade offs. Topics include logical and physical backup methods, full backups, incremental and differential backups, transaction log or write ahead log backups, point in time recovery, backup consistency and atomicity, transaction log management and truncation, database native and third party backup tools and commands, snapshot based backups and replication, strategies to meet Recovery Time Objective and Recovery Point Objective for database workloads, verification queries and restore testing for completeness and consistency, handling large data sets and partial restores, backup retention and archiving, encryption and secure storage of backups, and automated restore procedures and scripts for routine testing.
Storage and Database Infrastructure
Storage concepts: SSDs vs. HDDs, RAID configurations, storage protocols. Database troubleshooting basics, replication concepts, backup and recovery strategies, understanding query performance and index behavior, and storage at scale.