Re: Looking for 3rd party tools to make life easier

In article <5gtuo9$i8c_at_chronicle.concentric.net>, Nnoor_at_cris.com says...
>
> Hello,
> After finding out how "exciting" life would be with these top-end
> RDBMS Servers, we are looking for 3rd party tools which will make
> our life a little easier as long as we are married to ORACLE. Would
> you please suggest any 3rd party tools that do a good job of relieving
> someone of undue tension which may result in lots of sleepless hours?
> Thanks. Please also mention the web address as we would really like to
> try-before-we-buy these (often) very expensive tools.

Well, I have a liking to the following products:

	Patrol by BMC
	Patrol Meta Manage by BMC
	SQL*BackTrack by Datatools sold by BMC (do I see a patern here)
	Q by Savant (  * NEW * )

Everyone knows about Patrol. Patrol is great for setting your database and system thresholds and and integrating this tool into your production control and operations environments.

BMC's Meta Manage is great for managing database objects. This is not a schema designer. But, you can use it to do table reorgs and migrate objects.

SQL*BackTrack is great for database backups and recoveries! I just started a new thred here I think. Integration into third party tape management systems and operating systems.

Savant's Q is a new product I am liking. It is nearing it's first release and you may have seen it at IOUG and/or in the latest Oracle magaazine. Q is great for seeing real time database performance and drilling down into the database, seeing locks, running SQL, etc., etc. The difference between Patrol and Q is Patrol is more of a System Management tool while Q is more of a DBA tool. Your DBA's will want to be notified when Patrol alerts them to something, and your DBA will want to see exactly what is running in the database.

NOTE: I am in no way connected to any of the above vendors and/or their products with the exception that I have used them extensivly.

-- 
Neil Greene
Senior System Engineer
MCI Systemhouse, Inc.
email: <mailto: ngreene_at_laoc.SHL.com>