I am currently evaluating Quest (Foglight & Spotlight) vs. BMC (Patrol
& DBXray) and I am soliciting feedback from the community on these two
products or any others that I should check out. Any success stories,
shortcomings or anything else that you may be able to contribute to my
Proof of Concept? Your insight would be greatly appreciated.

Hi Ron

I am also conducting a similar investigation.

I spent a bit of time reviewing the DBXray product from BMC and found it
to be quite useful.

The Spotlight product from Quest was also useful and contained similar
options. I found the interface with this product far superior to that of
the DBXray product.

In terms of functionality, both offer similar options.

BMC uses the SmartDBA cockpit as the main interface, whereas Quest uses
Quest Central as their main interface.

I am yet to detail any of my comparisons, but know for a fact that the
Quest Software prices are usually quite expensive. Also Quest's
development team consist of former Technical Authors.

Hope this helps

Matt



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The problem with foglight, spotlight and BMC's DBXray is that they are
cockpit tools. Looks very nice - and sometimes they really help.
In my compagny we have tested both Quest products and BMC products.
Quest is more expensive but better than BMC products - BMC is cheaper.

Though both products are 'nice' we decided not to buy the product.

In huge compagnies one has several DB2, Sybase, SQL Server and Oracle
installations. These products can cope with almost all of them but
again
only at a hit ratio level. In my opinion one can get all the
information
from DBXray/Quest spotlight from the DB vendors own products. OK -
they look
nicer - and that's what you are paying for.

In my personal opinion the problem with both quest and BMC is:
a) they rely very much on "ratio's"
b) they lack the understanding of waits (oracle's wait interface), sql
servers
dbcc waitstats)
c) they lack the possibility of setting traces on specific users with
special requirements...
d) they lack the possiblity of one tool - for all DB's in huge
compagies i.e.
sql serve,oracle, sybase, udb and db2 for z/os. Huge compagnies do not
want to
buy a tool for every appliacation, or DB. One tool - one job - one

Anyone out there use MOM or Micromuse to monitor SQL Server? We are
starting to look into these and compare them.


Ray Higdon MCSE, MCDBA, CCNA

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