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Enterprise DBA's flexibility in replicating databases also impressed us. We replicated an entire database, including all of its dependencies, triggers, procedures and security. In another test, we migrated a partial schema (i.e., tables and indexes only). As we copied databases from one server to another, Enterprise DBA let us choose whether or not to preserve referential integrity. We assigned some of these complex operations to run on a separate computer and for a heavily database-intensive test, we avoided increased network traffic by telling Enterprise DBA to perform the operation on the database server itself. In all cases, a remote agent on each managed server analyzed t
he complexity of the request and successfully performed the change against the database.
Database Analyzer for Oracle--a tool for structural analysis, management and dictionary reporting--graphically displayed table spaces and database usage statistics that it collected in the lab. It let us specify statistical filters, measure and project trends, identify over-allocated tables, find the number of distinct keys in an index and store its results in retrievable history tables.
We were disappointed that PLATINUM's other database management products--DBVision, Database Analyzer, Log Analyzer, TSreorg and Fast Load/Unload--weren't integrated with Enterprise DBA's user interface, but they did work well in the lab. PLATINUM claims its ProVision interface, due later this year, will give Enterprise DBA and PLATINUM's other tools a tightly integrated, common user interface.
BMC Software PATROL
 We liked BMC's PATROL series
for its database alteration and migration abilities, and in the lab, PATROL's SQL command analysis and generation was quite useful. The PATROL tools resembled Enterprise DBA's data manipulation and monitoring abilities, but PATROL lacked tools for administering users and groups.
We used DB-Admin Knowledge Module for Oracle to monitor our Oracle database, Pathfinder to give us a Microsoft Internet Explorer-style view of our databases, DB-Alter to make database content and schema changes, DB-Change Manager to globally apply those changes, DB-Integrity to verify the soundness of our databases and SQL Explorer to analyze our SQL. BMC's DB-Voyager provided a common user interface for launching the vendor's tools. The vendor's prices for these components vary by platform and database, but they were comparable to PLATINUM's.
With DB-Alter, we easily modified schemas and migrated database contents between heterogeneous databases. We were impressed by how it analyzed our proposed changes and warned us when a cha
nge would have caused an invalid foreign key error or similar problem. After we used DB-Alter to design our changes, the script-based DB-Change Manager component propagated those changes globally over multiple, disparate databases. Even across multiple databases with the same basic structure--but containing customizations specific to each database instance--the tool preserved the distinct structure of each database.
We used DB-Alter's graphical object editors to efficiently create, modify, copy, rebuild and drop database objects. Like PLATINUM's Enterprise DBA, DB-Alter gave us the ability to modify more database attributes than we could handle by using the SQL syntax native to the RDBMS. We inserted a column in the middle of a table by simply clicking on a button and specifying the new column's attributes. DB-Alter analyzed the effect of adding the midrow column and generated an optimized change script.
BMC's PATROL supports the same databases as PLATINUM Enterprise DBA. Across our Adaptive Server, Ora
cle and SQL Server repositories, PATROL DB-Voyager proved itself an intuitive launching pad for the other PATROL tools. BMC says DB-Voyager also supports DB2 Common Server, DB2 for MVS and Informix. DB-Voyager extracted database schemas onto our local workstation and let us work with the copies, an approach BMC says reduces network traffic. We didn't agree, because experience has shown that even highly complex schemas, in contrast to database content, don't require much bandwidth.
With DB-Change Manager, we migrated several schema changes to our multiple databases, compared database versions and performed database object version management. We also used it to synchronize two versions of a database object and an entire database. DB-Change Manager hid differences between databases when we asked it to work with multiple database instances, and it provided us with an easy-to-use central console as simple to use as PLATINUM's or Tivoli's.
PATROL's DB-Admin Knowledge Module for Oracle was a reliable supplemen
t to our Oracle database. It continuously monitored the database for thousands of potential problems, alerting us via e-mail or pager when it detected trouble. Monitored situations included available disk space, the total number of active transactions as a percentage of the Oracle instance limit, the number of chained row fetches during a given period for the server instance, the percentage of free buffer access attempts that produce waits, the cache hit rate and long-running SQL statements. Its SQL Snapshot and SQL Viewer features let us capture and analyze SQL statements in real time. This module also presented us with an instance-level view of the Parallel Server Option's operation, including monitoring and reporting on lock releases, locks used, false pings and ping rate.
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