Interview Question : Avoid Database Failures ?

[Sangel Kapoor]

I was asked question in Interview as follows

How would you avoid/prevent when DB(say ORACLE) is down?

I don't know how to answer this question and what precisely she wanted to listen to an Answer.


I just said using multiple nodes/ distributed database will ensure availability. He seems not so happy with the answer. I cannot think beyond Replication of DB and Redundancy as Solution.

Suggestions.

[Jeanne Boyarsky]

Maybe she was looking for retry logic? Or a filter that tells users that the app is unavailable? Or monitoring?

I think the answer to this could be many things.