Re: Opinions on Quest Software's Schema Manager

John Rusk wrote:

> I am evaluating SQLab Schema Manager from Quest Software. Can anybody
who's
> used this tool share their opinions on it?

John,

We evaluated it very briefly about a year ago. We wanted to use it for its facility to rework a schema. For example, if we wanted to change the order of columns in a table, it does all the boring coding:

Saves the data
Drops the table
Recreates the table in the new format
Copies data back in
Recreates Triggers
Recreates Constraints
Recreates role grants
etc.

In the end, we bought a tool called DB Artisan, which is not quite as comprehensive, but did 90% of what we wanted for 10% of the price. Technically Schema Manager looked fine (though we didn't evaluate it for long). It scores over Artisan in the main by have a rollback facility, so that if something goes wrong during the DB restructure, it can recover back to the previous state (it claims! we didn't test this).

We have bought SQL*Lab (Query Optimisation), and also the wonderful SQL*Impact (Code change impact analysis).

Simon Hedges
Gloucester
UK Received on Tue Jun 01 1999 - 12:32:53 CEST