Recovering from Database Recovery: Case Studies and the Lessons They Teach

The attacks of September 11, 2001 and Hurricane Katrina forced database professionals to truly reconsider what it means to recover a database. Recovering the data stored on the disks is just one part of recovery. Reassessing disaster recovery plans and preparing to recover again is another. Perhaps the two most important changes include 1) addressing the needs of people in the recovery plan and 2) viewing database recovery from an enterprise-wide perspective, rather than from a technology slant. This paper discusses two major events that force us to think about recovering from database recovery.