Throughout the year, in SQL Server Magazine's New Products section, Vendor
Briefs, Buyer's Guides, Market Watch features, and product reviews, we put you
in touch with vendors who provide database products and services.This year,
we took a look at the products we've covered and realized that a few of these
vendors and products truly stand out. To recognize these exceptional vendors, the
editors and writers of SQL Server Magazine created the first annual Editors' Choice Awards.
To conduct the Editors' Choice Awards, we first divided the products we've
covered since January 2005 into 16 product categories. Then, the editors and
writers of SQL Server Magazine chose platinum and gold winners
in each category based on the product's strategic importance to the market,
its competitive advantages, and value to the customer. These vendors produce
superior products that solve specific database problems, make your businesses
more productive, save you money, help you grow your company and look to the
future—and might even help you go home earlier.
Application Development
AVIcode Intercept Studio
The platinum winner of SQL Server Magazine's 2006 Editors' Choice award
for Application Development tools is AVIcode Intercept Studio, an application-monitoring
tool that can help you diagnose application exceptions and application performance
bottlenecks. Intercept Studio doesn't require any changes to your application's
source code. Instead, you simply load the Intercept Studio agent onto the server
hosting your ASP.NET applications. AVIcode's exception monitoring lets you see
the call stack of the application at the time of failure along with variable
values from the failed module. For further diagnosis, you can drill through
to the source code. Tight integration with Visual Studio lets you open the problem
source module in the Visual Studio IDE. For performance monitoring, Intercept
Studio lets you set user-defined thresholds to monitor the response time of
crucial application components. The product comes with a set of six basic prepackaged
reports, including a Critical Exceptions and Critical Performance Hotspots report,
which lists the most frequent application exception and performance-problem
areas. Contact AVIcode at 443-543-0030 or http://www.avicode.com/productsinterceptstudio
overview.htm.
See Associated Figure
MicroFour StrataFrame Application Framework
The gold winner in the Application Development category is MicroFour StrataFrame
Application Framework, a layered application framework written for .NET 2.0
and designed for SQL Server, Oracle, and OLE DB. StrataFrame works with any
.NET language and is completely integrated with theVisual Studio IDE. The StrataFrame
Application Framework is an application class library that promotes simplicity,
scalability, maintainability, and code reuse in three layers: a Data Access
Layer, a Business Layer, and a Presentation Layer. By providing the overall
application design and class libraries, the product eliminates the effort of
creating a multi-layered application. For example, StrataFrame's data-access
class library handles all data access and data binding for the developer. The
only thing the developer needs to code is the UI and custom business logic.
Although StrataFrame performs many common developer tasks, developers can also
customize tasks to extend the scope of the application framework. And hooks
into the framework let the developer interact with events and dataflow sequences.
Contact MicroFour at 866-491-6162, 806-463-7007, or http://www.strataframe.net.
See Associated Figure
Backup and Remote/Disaster Recovery
Quest Software LiteSpeed for SQL Server
The platinum winner for Backup and Recovery tools is Quest Software's LiteSpeed
for SQL Server, software that provides high-performance, low-impact data compression
to reduce storage costs and backup-and-recovery windows by compressing data
up to 95 percent. LiteSpeed gives DBAs complete control over the backup-and-recovery
process with features such as Object Level Recovery, which lets you restore
individual database objects and encapsulates a complete database restore into
a single file.You can also perform a full database restore to a different server,
eliminating the time needed to install new software. LiteSpeed can restore a
single backup of data and attached files, eliminating the need to complete two
separate database restores. Additional features include the ability to attach
files to your backup to document your archives.With the Enterprise Command Level
Interface (CLI), you can use LiteSpeed's command-line and query-scripting capabilities
to integrate with an existing enterprise backup solution. Lite-Speed's layered
encryption feature guards your data from unauthorized users. And the product
supports all SQL Server 2005 backup-and-restore features. Contact Quest Software
at 949-754-8000 or http://www.quest.com/litespeed_for_sql_server.
See Associated Figure
Sonasoft SonaSafe for SQL Server
The gold winner in the Backup and Recovery category is Sonasoft's SonaSafe for
SQL Server, software that provides automated backup, point-of-failure or point-in-time
recovery, and intelligent standby functionality. Users can back up and recover
a single database, multiple databases, a single SQL Server instance, or an entire
server through a point-and-click interface. SonaSafe provides templates for
developing automated standby plans, and the software supports one-to-one, many-to-one,
and one-to-many standby scenarios. SonaSafe has built-in network resilience
that assures safe data transfer. Key features include the ability to recover
from anywhere; compression; a Web-based interface; an automated, policy-based
purging functionality; the ability to manage multiple servers through a management
console; and excellent diagnostic capability. If the primary server fails, the
standby server can take over instantly.The software supports local and remote
recovery, safeguarding against geographic disasters and faults. Only changed
information is transmitted during synchronization to minimize network traffic
and provide more efficient storage. SonaSafe supports SQL Server 2000 and 7.0.
Contact Sonasoft at 408-927-6200 or http://www.sonasoft.com.
See Associated Figure