PLATINUM, BMC & Tivoli Bring Enterprise Database Management Down To Earth

By Barry Nance   The ideal vantage point for managing disparate databases across an enterprise is somewhere in heaven. Unfortunately, the average DBA's (database administrator) workplace is far from the ideal--and the workload isn't ideal, either. Gartner Group estimates that every Fortune 1,000 organization has an average of five database sources. Company acquisitions, along with uncoordinated purchasing by autonomous departments within the business community, account for this database diversity. Database management tools that hide differences among databases acr oss the enterprise, while offering features such as global user administration, heterogeneous schema and content manipulation and timely problem detection, may make you think you've died and gone to heaven. To view the Report card. To bring you up to speed on enterprise-level management tools for relational databases, we invited database tool vendors to submit their best administrative and management aids for evaluation in Network Computing's labs. We looked at how well they save a DBA time and energy by supporting multiple databases running on different platforms. We evaluated each tool's user interface and also tested user administration, schema and content manipulation and monitoring capabilities across a range of network scenarios. BMC Software sent us several products in its PATROL series: DB-Admin Knowledge Module, Pathfinder, DB-Voyager, DB-Alter, DB-Change Ma nager, DB-Integrity and SQL-Explorer. PLATINUM technology forwarded its Enterprise DBA 2.2 product, along with DBVision 3.1 for Oracle and Sybase, Database Analyzer for Oracle 1.1 and TSreorg for Oracle 2.0 and Sybase 1.0 modules. Tivoli Systems supplied us with Tivoli TME 10 Framework 3.5 and TME 10 Modules for monitoring Sybase, Oracle and Microsoft SQL Server databases. Tivoli's parent company, IBM Corp., added its separately available, no-cost DB2 Enterprise Control Center (DB2 ECC). Microsoft Corp. advanced us a beta copy of SQL Server 7.0, which contains its SQL Enterprise Manager (SEM) component. SEM is not a heterogeneous tool and would have earned low marks if we had included it in this review; it runs only on Windows NT Server and administers SQL Server 7.0. Nevertheless, we discuss its value as an example of the level of integration with operating systems and databases that other vendors should aspire to (see "SQL Enterprise Manager--How It Should Be Done," on page 108). Hewlett-Packard Co . is in the process of making its OpenView product database-aware, but the new functionality wasn't ready for testing. HP's design for the latest OpenView components focuses narrowly on monitoring database events and problems, deliberately forgoing database administration and management tasks. HP says its programmers will extend OpenView's current network monitoring capabilities to encompass heterogeneous databases across an enterprise. Computer Associates International declined our invitation to submit UniCenter TNG's database modules. CA said it didn't want its network manager UniCenter TNG to be evaluated solely on the merits of the tool's RDBMS (relational database management system) functions.

For the Side Bar on How We Tested SQL Enterprise Manager--How It Should Be Done Other Reviews ADC Kentrox and 3Com Aggregate ATM WAN Traffic By David Willis