DBeaver vs. SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer

If you are connecting to Snowflake and want to query from your laptop, I find that this is much easier to use than Snowflake's IDE. It allows us as a business intelligence team to more easily connect to our servers, and code with much less hassle. It would be less appropriate if you are only on an on-premises SQL server, in that case, I would just use SSMS.

Incentivized

This is an easy 10 because I actually have recommended this product to multiple clients and colleagues! Any shop that writes its own SQL queries will benefit from the insight provided by SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer, so they know which of their queries is causing a bottleneck. Small shops or databases with only a few tables likely will see far fewer opportunities for optimization.

Incentivized

• Identify types of DB connections by color code: development, testing and production.
• Predictive typing, it is incredibly accurate and saves me a lot of time.
• Jump between different simultaneous DB connections.
• Navigate through the schema object tree.
• Provide all the tools I need in one window.

• Maintains historical SQL execution data, enabling forensic analysis
• Has the ability to slice and dice the data so that you can drill down to the execution of a single SQL statement being executed by a stored procedure
• Alerts to when the consumption pattern changes
• Shows historical average run times against the current, illustrating problems when they arise
• Provides tuning advice based on best practices

Incentivized

• Schema editing is not very intuitive. Editing a single column forces you into multiple tab windows when trying to change something simple like a column name.
• Sorting and filtering in data is nice, but buried in long right-click menus.
• Some things are definitely non-standard UI for a Windows application, so it might be hard for die-hard Windows fans to get used to.

Incentivized

• Alerts seem to be lacking in DPA compared to competitor's tools. They can be setup but are not quite as easy or as helpful as some other tools I have used.
• Grooming/pruning the repository database isn't very easy. We don't manage a lot of instances but our repo DB has grown pretty significantly.
• At times when I am drilled-down to a chart, it can be difficult to navigate around from that point to another time range/query/metric.

Incentivized

We have relied on this product for a very long time and it continues to exceed expectations. The product is a vital part of our organization at this point, it would not be very ideal for us to abandon it. We use it almost every day and depend on its alerts for critical parts of our business

Incentivized

It's perfectly easy to use. Not super new and shiny with lots of accessibility tailored tools, but does the job

Incentivized

I don't want to think about managing clusters of SQL servers in the future without this tool. We have demoed other tools and SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer is the gold standard for usability and insight into what your servers are doing. The UI is a bit dated, but everything is laid out in a logical manner and drilling down into queries or timeslices is extremely intuitive.

Incentivized

Not a lot of users have DBeaver so fewer resources are available online to help you if you have any issues. When I was trying to figure out how to create my own ER diagrams, it was a little tough to find resources

Incentivized

I have had to use their support on a few occasions, for reasons that I am not clear about until recently I have always had problems upgrading the software (although the last 2 updates have gone without issue which I am very pleased to say). On those unfortunate occasions, the support has been brilliant with either excellently documented guides on how to resolve the issue by myself or have been hands-on with calls and screen sharing to remotely fix the issue. Every time the problem was sorted and more importantly, nothing was lost (apart from a bit of time). And as I stated above whatever the problem was that was causing my upgrade issues appears to have been resolved in the last 2 updates.

Incentivized

Follow the guidelines for the capacity of the servers. We found that the DPA databases were getting rather large and also that there are ways to reduce their size built into some of the options.

Incentivized

MySQL workbench from MySQL only supports MySQL databases and it only provides basic functionality. On top of that, the user experience could be quite confusing for first-time users. SSMS from SQL server doesn't support inline editing nicely. The view for inline editing and view data is different, making it uncomfortable to use. All in all, DBeaver is the best tool when you manage a lot of databases with different types.

Incentivized

At the time, we found SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer to be easier to setup and to have a richer feature set than Redgate SQL Monitor, plus, from what I remember, the DPA pricing worked better for us over the course of a year. We're very happy with all the features DPA has to offer.

Incentivized

• Positive Ability to manage DBeaver and query ad-hoc quickly
• By having the queries saved it has saved developer time and thereby increased the ROI on the investment on the tool
• This has made firefighting quicker and freed up resources for more development work.

Incentivized

• It has allowed us to progress as an organization with much less reliance on a direct DBA than would traditionally be required
• Allowed us to be much more proactive in our performance monitoring and responding to issues that would affect users.

Incentivized