Shrink-Wrapped DBAs

It's no secret that many organizations are looking to cut IT costs. To do so, they're either requiring increased output from their highly skilled DBAs or simply replacing them with less skilled DBAs.What's helping to fill the gaps between overwork and inexperience? Software. In this comparative review, I examine two comprehensive database-management products created specifically for such scenarios: Embarcadero Technologies' DBArtisan and Quest Software's Quest Central for SQL Server.

You'll find that the scope of these two products is quite vast, considering that both DBArtisan and Quest Central are well known in the industry for their heterogeneous platform-management capabilities. Both products provide an assortment of tools to help DBAs automate routine tasks, and recently both vendors have outfitted their products with a bevy of complex analysis and optimization tools that let DBAs easily secure, configure, and optimize their servers and applications.As I walk you through my evaluation of the two products, I'll do so from the standpoint of how well they provide value to two types of DBAs: For less skilled DBAs, who need help with analysis, optimization, and capacity planning, I'll consider how well the products help DBAs improve their overall skill set as well as cope with day-to-day pressures and requirements. For more experienced DBAs, who merely need an extra set of eyes and arms, I'll consider how well these tools can help tackle ever-increasing workloads.

DBArtisan
I've used Embarcadero products in the past—for example, ER/Studio and Rapid SQL—but I had never used DBArtisan before my testing for this review. Fortunately, obtaining a 15-day trial version of the software from Embarcadero's Web site was simple. Installation went smoothly, and within 24 hours, Embarcadero's support staff contacted me to ensure that the download and installation had gone well and hadn't left me frustrated in any way—nice touch.

The basics. After completing the installation,I began experimenting with the standard administration console to view the various options available for managing my server, databases, and database objects. As Figure 1 shows, the interface's options and functionality are roughly comparable to those of SQL Server's native Enterprise Manager (or the newer SQL Server Management Studio). However, I was immediately impressed by the UI's speed and responsiveness.We all know what a tugboat Enterprise Manager can be; in comparison, DBArtisan is downright snappy.

As I began to edit objects, I discovered a terrific surprise.The product's administrative object editors provide a GUI, as well as the ability to rapidly toggle between the graphical representation and the object's Data Definition Language (DDL). In DBArtisan, everything associated with an object is accessible through tabs in the editor, and toggling back and forth between the tabs (including moving from the GUI to the DDL code) is instantaneous.With this functionality, skilled DBAs can make quick changes with the GUI but can still easily perform more complex operations manually when necessary. Likewise, this capability is a big win for inquisitive, less-skilled DBAs because it provides them with a great tool for contextualizing options, making changes, and seeing how those changes are translated into the corresponding DDL.

In the product's Utilities menu, I found the Schema Migration, Schema Extraction, Data Unload, and Data Load tools. Such tools are important to me because I've spent a lot of time as a DBA herding data and schema between servers and databases. Sadly, the Data Unload and Data Load tools didn't work as I anticipated. I tested them a few times, only to find that zero rows had been exported. I checked online, as well as the included documentation, to make sure that I wasn't confused about the nature of the Unload and Load functionality, then decided to retry the wizard, this time selecting the Use BCP option. Doing so fixed the problem, and I was able to export and import. I had hoped for a proprietary feature—similar to MySQL's dump functionality—but having a GUI to wrap Bulk Copy Program (BCP) functionality is still a decent solution.The Schema Extraction tool was easy to use, exporting selected schema quickly, but I ran into trouble when I tried to recreate an entire database by running the script in a new, blank database. Apparently, the generation process doesn't script objects in the correct order.That made the export functionality effectively useless as a tool for creating new databases through scripting—which might be a concern for some DBAs.

Diving deeper. Next, I turned my attention to DBArtisan's Analyst features.The first tool I tried was Space Analyst, which displayed a console for quickly evaluating a number of useful drive-utilization metrics. Metrics were exposed in easily approachable graphs, showing space consumed by database as well as available remaining disk space. Space Analyst also provided valuable metrics about object fragmentation and density. For junior DBAs, Space Analyst provides dependable functionality to avoid running out of space; more skilled DBAs can use the graphs and metrics to spot trends and evaluate performance bottlenecks and problems.

Backup Analyst is another DBArtisan component geared toward simplifying database administration.The tool provides functionality roughly on par with that of Enterprise Manager, letting you create maintenance plans by walking through a wizard. Backup Analyst also provides detailed reports about backup frequency and status. The big benefit, however, is the integrated functionality that allows for encrypted and compressed backups—probably this product's sweet spot, considering that dedicated solutions that provide encryption and compression can be quite costly.

DBArtisan also includes a Performance Analyst tool, which provides real-time metrics about a server's current activity and operations.This tool's well-designed UI lets you quickly navigate data about memory usage, I/O activity, space utilization, user activity, and core database metrics (e.g., errors, replication, backups, current configuration). In many ways, the information is similar to what you get from Performance Monitor and SQL Server Profiler, but DBArtisan arranges the data in compartments to ensure that the metrics are meaningful and easily digestible. For skilled DBAs, this functionality provides quick and easy insight into current operations, and it provides enough raw data to permit real trend analysis. For junior-level DBAs, Performance Analyst is a helpful tool for identifying bottlenecks and potential performance problems before they become nightmares.

I rounded out my DBArtisan evaluation by taking a quick look at Capacity Analyst. This tool requires you to set up traces, or profiles, for the collection of metrics it can later use for analysis and trending. I started up the Capacity Collection Wizard, which guided me smoothly through the process of specifying which data points I wanted to collect for later analysis. Capacity Analyst is a great tool for experienced DBAs: It doesn't provide much information that you couldn't get by carefully crafting performance logs in Performance Monitor, but it makes information collection easy, and it also lets you "slice and dice" various metrics so that you can watch for specific items. I doubt this tool will be quite as enticing for less-experienced DBAs, but because of the way it lets you collect information, I can imagine using it to watch for specific problems. For example, you can easily set up a complex trace that watches for NETWORKIO waits on a specific file group, database, or even table or index. And after you specify what to watch for, you can easily identify the metrics you want to include to help you analyze any collected data.