IDERA SQL Diagnostic Manager vs. Woodler SMT vs. Toad Database Developer Tools

SQL Server [Business Intelligence] Manager is useful for tracking performance across SSIS, SSRS and SSA and have the data represented in dashboards. It helps improve performance and helps end users. However, several features are redundant for smaller organization that can use the tools that comes with existing Microsoft products. These features also takes time to learn and use.

Incentivized

Woodler SMT is intended to be [a] specialized SQL Server monitoring tool. Unlike other monitoring systems, Woodler SMT does not take care [of] networks, AD, and other stuff along [with] company infrastructures. As for me, at least, this makes the Woodler SMT very strong in its area of expertise. If anybody is looking for [professional,] specialized SQL performance monitoring, the Woodler SMT would be the best choice. For general monitoring, this tool rather will not help.

Toad for Oracle is very well suited for all Oracle implementations, be it single instance or RAC. It is best suited for use of Oracle DBA, Developer and Database Engineers. I don't recommend Toad for Oracle for Project Managers or Solution Architects. This can be a pricier choice for these people. They can do fine with free options like SQL Developer.

Incentivized

• SQLdm does a good job of providing information at a high level, but also allows me to drill down to specific queries and events if needed. I don't always need to sift through tons of details to get the information I need. It also gives a very wide range of information from SQL specific metrics, to OS metrics, to VM metrics, all the way up to host server metrics.
• I like how the alert and notification system can be customized. For example, if you know a certain server regularly has long-running queries, you can adjust the alert to not fire unless a query has been running for 30 minutes while the rest of the servers fire after 30 seconds. That is very helpful in not being bombarded at dinner with alerts from a server similar to, "I've been at 90% cpu for 26 milliseconds!!!!!!!...and now it's back down to 30%" Good information to know, but not something you need to literally lose sleep over.
• I like how you can configure different servers to be monitored differently. For example, you can have a group of servers called DEVELOPMENT that you can turn on heavier monitoring on so you can test how changes in applications might affect the SQL environment, but in the PRODUCTION group, you may only want to enable the heavier analysis and logging when performance issues are actively being reported.

Incentivized

• It contains all the diagnostics information that you need for optimization of queries, deep analysis of SQL server state, and much more
• Regular deployment of a new versions with minor fixes but mainly with the new features.
• It helps to make operational decisions, how to improve the performance and also expansion of the whole environment.
• Buying this also contains excellent service from the Woodler support.

• Toad is a de-facto standard tool for data developers and analysts. Generally speaking it provides almost every function needed to manage data in EDW with great performance and stability.
• The nature of clinical data is big-sized: one table may have billions of rows. Toad provides critical functions to manage SQLs, e.g. Top SQL that can monitor and manage SQLs using CPU power and network bandwidth, so that EDW administrator can optimize ETL operations in the best efficiency.
• Many of our data analysts are not computer science backgrounded (having clinical / nursing background). Toad provides great auditing tools such as Tuning Lab or SQL Scanner, so that data analysts can train themselves with guidance of the tool.

Incentivized

• Windows client has some issues. When you have small time intervals for your data collection, it can cause the client to become unresponsive and require you to restart it.
• It takes more time to get the web client running than it does to get the windows client running.
• The visualizations have been the same for the last eight years--could use a little bit of a refresh.

Incentivized

• Sysadmin access to your system.
• Consumes disk capacity on monitored server to store all the data.

• The power and control it gives is at the same time kind of a negative thing. There's too many options available, even when you don't need them. For simple database operations it's sometimes easier to just use SQL Developer since navigation is way more intuitive and easy.
• Related with the above: there is a steep learning curve. However, since this is the main tool for any Oracle developer, this is not that much of a problem.
• If I remember well, Toad used to be free, some 20 years ago. Or at least had a free version. It would be nice to have a free version. The dedicated Oracle developers and DBA's won't use the free version, but all the rest of us developers might use it instead of SQL Developer. It would make communications between everybody somewhat easier.

Incentivized

It is the preferred tool for our organization.

Incentivized

I give is an 8 because nothing is a 10 and there is always room for improvement. I believe the user who is not as technologically inclined would be better suited with an easier way to identify the options for setting the layout up for Toad's GUI. To some it is very cumbersome and confusing.

Incentivized

I give the overall support for Toad for Oracle a 10/10. This is because whenever there has been an issue with this software, our team has got an immediate response. The same can not be said for similar software. The most recent example of this is when we needed to renew our licenses. Some employees were unable to log in to code with the given license key. Support was able to resolve the issue quickly.

Incentivized

IDERA SQL Diagnostic Manager for SQL, Redgate SQL, and MonitorLogicMonitor are similar products to each other. We decided on IDERA SQL Diagnostic Manager for SQL because our experience with locating heavy queries has been very good and it provides real-time monitoring of all servers and databases. It also allows you to have a large volume of historical data which allows you to analyze trends in the databases.

Incentivized

We like Woodler SMT because we can benefit from Woodler Support team to connect to our servers and help us with different issues.

Toad is much better than Tableau query writer. Tableau is not intuitive and requires knowledge of proprietary database language to fully implement. Tableau does not perform as quickly and accurately as Toad. Toad is very easy and slim to install. Additional hardware is often required to run Tableau smoothly. Support for Tableau is even more expensive than Toad support.

Incentivized

• Allows us to quickly set up ETL processes as soon as we installed SQL Server.
• There's a lot of free/paid resources available online, decreasing development time.
• A tool with plenty of experienced developers.

Incentivized

• It saves the time of troubleshooting
• It increases user's satisfaction with products relaying on SQL Server's performance

• Quick and easy query development helps reduce man-hours in a project which converts to real dollars.
• Query analysis and tuning result in low database overhead and low latency, thus translating into real dollars because a system can thus handle more requests from customers.
• Ease of use makes it easy to deploy greenhorns in projects with minimal training, thus helping save money. Otherwise menial and simple jobs would have required experienced DBAs.

Incentivized