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April 20, 2006 12:00 AM

Shrink-Wrapped DBAs

A two-pronged look at heterogeneous management tools
SQL Server Pro
InstantDoc ID #49748

Winner by a Hair
Both products offer a number of solid features, and both come with few weaknesses, mostly surrounding standard administration functionality, as well as schema-change management and data import/export functionality. Those weaknesses are a fairly big deal in my world, but they aren't showstoppers. Personally,because of those weaknesses,I don't imagine either tool becoming a one-stop replacement for the tools I already use. However, both DBArtisan and Quest Central offer powerful functionality that I wouldn't hesitate to acquire for supplemental needs in the right environments.

I've been both a reluctant DBA and a seasoned veteran, and I can say that I'd be comfortable using either of these tools or recommending them to colleagues. Both provide value in terms of making management easier, and both offer valuable services that help ensure better uptime, scalability, and reliability—but DBArtisan takes a slight edge thanks to its strong object editors.

See Table 1



ARTICLE TOOLS

Comments
  • WELLINTON
    6 years ago
    May 18, 2006

    In a previous job I was using DBArtisan. It was really amazing. One of the biggest advantage is that the product uses the APIs already installed on the operating system (at least the version of Artisan I had installed at that moment). Esentially this means that you can install the client of each database (MS-SQLServer, IBM-DB2, etc.) that you're administering and connect to any of them from a common interface. I found that option awesome, because when I needed to create reports (strange reports that our managers never ask to us) such as '% Database Space Use', 'Users Created', 'Permissions Assigned', 'Activities'; all of them were created with the same look and feel, ; and using the same administration interface too. That was a huge advantage for a DBA like me that usually needed to access so different interfaces that sometimes were very heavy for the operating system. Using DBArtisan as a common console was an Excellent choice for me.

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