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    Overview
    ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price

    Looker

    Score8.1 out of 10
    N/ALooker is a BI application with an analytics-oriented application server that sits on top of relational data stores. It includes an end-user interface for exploring data, a reusable development paradigm for data discovery, and an API for supporting data in other systems.N/A

    SolarWinds SQL Sentry

    Score10 out of 10
    N/ASolarWinds SQL Sentry is designed to help data professionals optimize SQL Server database performance in physical, virtual, and cloud environments. SQL Sentry delivers metrics to help users find and fix database performance problems and provides scalability, boasting demonstrated success monitoring 800+ SQL Server instances with one monitoring database. With SQL Sentry, the user can monitor: SQL Server Azure SQL Database SQL Server Analysis…

    $0

    Free

    Pricing
    LookerSolarWinds SQL Sentry
    Editions & Modules
    No answers on this topic
    Plan Explorer (SQL Server Query Tuning)
    $0
    Free
    SQL Sentry for Azure SQL Database
    $161
    Per year per database (annual subscription)
    SQL Sentry
    1,450
    Per year per instance (annual subscription)
    Offerings
    Pricing Offerings
    LookerSolarWinds SQL Sentry
    Free Trial
    YesYes
    Free/Freemium Version
    NoNo
    Premium Consulting/Integration Services
    YesYes
    Entry-level Setup FeeRequiredNo setup fee
    Additional DetailsMust contact sales team for pricing.—
    More Pricing Information
    Community Pulse
    LookerSolarWinds SQL Sentry
    Considered Both Products
    Google
    No answer on this topic
    SolarWinds
    No answer on this topic
    Key User Insights
    Would buy again
    98%
    Would buy again
    85 Answers
    100%
    Would buy again
    6 Answers
    Delivers good value for the price
    99%
    Delivers good value for the price
    75 Answers
    100%
    Delivers good value for the price
    5 Answers
    Happy with the feature set
    100%
    Happy with the feature set
    87 Answers
    100%
    Happy with the feature set
    6 Answers
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    98%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    55 Answers
    100%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    6 Answers
    Implementation went as expected
    97%
    Implementation went as expected
    69 Answers
    100%
    Implementation went as expected
    6 Answers
    Features
    LookerSolarWinds SQL Sentry
    BI Standard Reporting
    Comparison of BI Standard Reporting features of Looker and SolarWinds SQL Sentry
    Feature
    Looker
    7.4
    134 Ratings
    10% below category average
    SolarWinds SQL Sentry
    -
    Ratings
    Pixel Perfect reports6.5110 Ratings00 Ratings
    Customizable dashboards8.2133 Ratings00 Ratings
    Report Formatting Templates7.5115 Ratings00 Ratings
    Ad-hoc Reporting
    Comparison of Ad-hoc Reporting features of Looker and SolarWinds SQL Sentry
    Feature
    Looker
    6.8
    132 Ratings
    16% below category average
    SolarWinds SQL Sentry
    -
    Ratings
    Drill-down analysis6.3128 Ratings00 Ratings
    Formatting capabilities6.6130 Ratings00 Ratings
    Integration with R or other statistical packages5.655 Ratings00 Ratings
    Report sharing and collaboration8.8131 Ratings00 Ratings
    Report Output and Scheduling
    Comparison of Report Output and Scheduling features of Looker and SolarWinds SQL Sentry
    Feature
    Looker
    7.9
    128 Ratings
    4% below category average
    SolarWinds SQL Sentry
    -
    Ratings
    Publish to Web7.7105 Ratings00 Ratings
    Publish to PDF7.8113 Ratings00 Ratings
    Report Versioning7.984 Ratings00 Ratings
    Report Delivery Scheduling8.2110 Ratings00 Ratings
    Data Discovery and Visualization
    Comparison of Data Discovery and Visualization features of Looker and SolarWinds SQL Sentry
    Feature
    Looker
    6.6
    128 Ratings
    19% below category average
    SolarWinds SQL Sentry
    -
    Ratings
    Pre-built visualization formats (heatmaps, scatter plots etc.)7.7124 Ratings00 Ratings
    Location Analytics / Geographic Visualization7.5110 Ratings00 Ratings
    Predictive Analytics4.66 Ratings00 Ratings
    Access Control and Security
    Comparison of Access Control and Security features of Looker and SolarWinds SQL Sentry
    Feature
    Looker
    7.3
    128 Ratings
    15% below category average
    SolarWinds SQL Sentry
    -
    Ratings
    Multi-User Support (named login)7.5120 Ratings00 Ratings
    Role-Based Security Model7.2105 Ratings00 Ratings
    Multiple Access Permission Levels (Create, Read, Delete)7.2122 Ratings00 Ratings
    Report-Level Access Control7.360 Ratings00 Ratings
    Mobile Capabilities
    Comparison of Mobile Capabilities features of Looker and SolarWinds SQL Sentry
    Feature
    Looker
    5.2
    95 Ratings
    39% below category average
    SolarWinds SQL Sentry
    -
    Ratings
    Responsive Design for Web Access4.991 Ratings00 Ratings
    Mobile Application5.01 Ratings00 Ratings
    Dashboard / Report / Visualization Interactivity on Mobile5.885 Ratings00 Ratings
    SQL Performance Monitoring
    Comparison of SQL Performance Monitoring features of Looker and SolarWinds SQL Sentry
    Feature
    Looker
    -
    Ratings
    SolarWinds SQL Sentry
    8.4
    102 Ratings
    3% above category average
    Performance dashboard00 Ratings9.1102 Ratings
    Intelligent alerting00 Ratings7.996 Ratings
    Top SQL00 Ratings8.6102 Ratings
    Historical trend data00 Ratings8.6100 Ratings
    Virtualization support00 Ratings8.764 Ratings
    Best Alternatives
    LookerSolarWinds SQL Sentry
    Small Businesses
    Cyfe
    Score4 out of 10
    No answers on this topic
    Medium-sized Companies
    Qlik Cloud Analytics (Qlik Sense)
    Score8.1 out of 10
    No answers on this topic
    Enterprises
    Sisense
    Score6.9 out of 10
    No answers on this topic
    All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
    User Ratings
    LookerSolarWinds SQL Sentry
    Likelihood to Recommend
    8.0
    (134 ratings)
    8.6
    (102 ratings)
    Likelihood to Renew
    9.2
    (8 ratings)
    8.8
    (16 ratings)
    Usability
    8.8
    (12 ratings)
    9.0
    (12 ratings)
    Availability
    10.0
    (1 ratings)
    7.1
    (2 ratings)
    Performance
    6.0
    (1 ratings)
    7.1
    (2 ratings)
    Support Rating
    8.8
    (14 ratings)
    7.5
    (14 ratings)
    In-Person Training
    -
    (0 ratings)
    8.0
    (1 ratings)
    Implementation Rating
    10.0
    (1 ratings)
    8.8
    (8 ratings)
    Configurability
    10.0
    (1 ratings)
    7.9
    (2 ratings)
    Contract Terms and Pricing Model
    10.0
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Data Sharing and Collaboration
    8.5
    (51 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Data Sources
    7.3
    (51 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Ease of integration
    10.0
    (1 ratings)
    5.0
    (1 ratings)
    Product Scalability
    10.0
    (1 ratings)
    7.0
    (1 ratings)
    Professional Services
    10.0
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Vendor post-sale
    10.0
    (1 ratings)
    8.5
    (2 ratings)
    Vendor pre-sale
    10.0
    (1 ratings)
    8.5
    (2 ratings)
    User Testimonials
    LookerSolarWinds SQL Sentry
    Likelihood to Recommend
    Google
    When data drives potential for new orders, Looker earns its place in our tech stack. If, on the other hand, we are hoping for pipeline generation, Looker is useful if you are willing to repeatedly go check customer utilizations .... it is not appropriate if you are hoping to automate data analysis for this purpose.
    Incentivized
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    SolarWinds
    This solution is perfect for a team with a large server count and, at least, moderate experience supporting a SQL Server environment. If the environment is smaller or the team has less experience working with SQL Server performance tuning methodologies, then the tool may be overwhelming for the users.
    Incentivized
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    Pros
    Google
    • Show visited pages - sessions, pageviews - which programs are viewed the most.
    • Displays session source/medium views to see where users are coming from.
    • It shows the video titles, URLs, and event counts so we can monitor the performance of our videos.
    • It gives a graphic face to the numbers, such as using bar charts, pie graphs, and other charts to show user trends or which channels are driving engagement.
    • Our clients like to see the top pages visited for a month.
    • I like the drop-and-drag approach, and building charts is a little easier than it was before.
    Incentivized
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    SolarWinds
    • The Top SQL functionality has been extremely useful for identifying poorly performing queries by resource consumption.
    • The flexibility of creating your own Advisory Conditions has allowed us to integrate our custom internal alerts into a centralized dashboard and alerting platform.
    • Being able to highlight any chart on the dashboard and then tool-matching that window across all the other charts makes it much easier to correlate the different performance metrics against each other.
    Incentivized
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    Cons
    Google
    • Documentation is scarce, and very difficult to find when you need it.
    • Pricing is unclear, particularly as you look to scale your reports across the business.
    • Data from other sources is not represented in the system as well as first party Google services.
    Incentivized
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    SolarWinds
    • Tuning advice: With all the graphs and data available, it's not always easy to determine the best thing to do. I'd like to see SentryOne provide some best practice analysis based on the historical information collected for the server being looked at.
    • They could add help tips or links to help documents, when you select a graph on the dashboard. Inexperienced users tend to put blinders on and focus on one thing when they see a high counter or something out of the ordinary. It would be very useful to include a link that provides underlying help. The link would provide an explanation of the counter in detail and offer possible explanations as to why the counter is off.
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    Likelihood to Renew
    Google
    I give it this rating because it deems as effective, I am able to complete majority of my tasks using this app. It is very helpful when analyzing the data provided and shown in the app and it's just overall a great app for Operational use, despite the small hiccups it has (live data).
    Incentivized
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    SolarWinds
    Absolutely. SQL Sentry is an absolute must have for any company with a SQL Server estate. It provides a force multiplier to effectively manage SQL Server, and the feature sets are second to none. The support and expertise at SentryOne is incredible. They are very supportive of both the platform users and helping your business with the product
    Incentivized
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    Usability
    Google
    Looker is relatively easy to use, even as it is set up. The customers for the front-end only have issues with the initial setup for looker ml creations. Other "looks" are relatively easy to set up, depending on the ETL and the data which is coming into Looker on a regular basis.
    Incentivized
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    SolarWinds
    I accept that the flexibility of the alerting comes at a price. Other than the alerting SQL Sentry's interface is intuitive. Connecting to a new SQL instance, given that all the needed ports are open in your firewalls is straight forward. Reviewing the performance and queries for an instance is available in with a right click. As you dig in new tabs are created to present the detailed data. I find the ability to filter and rollup metrics on a query very helpful in dealing with the "it's running slow". You can easily compare the metrics of run times for the same query to let the user know, it's probably data your doing a billion reads instead of the usual 100 thousand.
    Incentivized
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    Reliability and Availability
    Google
    No objections
    Incentivized
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    SolarWinds
    The system is working perfectly in capturing data, but we do experience issues with SQL Timeout when viewing results in the remote clients. This may be due to the fact that our monitoring service is consuming most of the CPU, and it is the same server that is hosting the SQL Repository. We could probably fix the issue by separating the SQL instance from the monitoring service.
    Incentivized
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    Performance
    Google
    Somehow resources heavy, both on server and client. I recommned at least 50Mbs data rate and high performance desktop comouter to be abke to run comolex tasks and configure larger amount of data. On the other hand, the client does not need to worry when viewing, the performance is usually ok
    Incentivized
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    SolarWinds
    In most cases the pages load very quickly. In our particular case, we need to do some movement of services to separate our monitoring service to separate infrastructure from the repository. When we first started with SQL Sentry on 5 licenses, we did not have any issues. Since we have now grown that to 25, we are experiencing some challenges. We do not believe this to be a tool problem
    Incentivized
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    Support Rating
    Google
    Never had to work with support for issues. Any questions we had, they would respond promptly and clearly. The one-time setup was easy, by reading documentation. If the feature is not supported, they will add a feature request. In this case, LDAP support was requested over OKTA. They are looking into it.
    Incentivized
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    SolarWinds
    From their infancy as a smaller company to now as a global player they have always kept focus on prioritising he customer. They know their product and the technology it supports and are easily accessible for both resolving problems with the product all the way to adding value through additional training and assisting with getting return on investment through utilisation of the many features the product provides.
    Incentivized
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    In-Person Training
    Google
    No answers on this topic
    SolarWinds
    sql sentry expert came onsight to review the performance of installation and gave us a good insight to using the tool
    Incentivized
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    Implementation Rating
    Google
    Very satisfied, easy to implement
    Incentivized
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    SolarWinds
    Was suggested that we install the process monitors on a dev or qa database server, but we found it more useful to create an IT db server and put it there (along with a few other apps that we use for monitoring).
    Incentivized
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    Alternatives Considered
    Google
    Looker Studio, you can easily report on data from various sources without programming. Looker Studio is available at no charge for creators and report viewers. Enterprise customers who upgrade to Looker Studio Pro will receive support and expanded administrative features, including team content management. So it's good.
    Incentivized
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    SolarWinds
    SQL Sentry offers more features and is customize-able to fit our business needs. It has more centralized management and support. The company's technical support is also top notch. It is also worth mentioning that SentryOne Team Blog is an excellent source. One can find lots of valuable troubleshooting skills on the blog site - very educational and informational.
    Incentivized
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    Contract Terms and Pricing Model
    Google
    Perfect price to performance
    Incentivized
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    SolarWinds
    No answers on this topic
    Scalability
    Google
    No answers on this topic
    SolarWinds
    We are running 25 instances through a single monitoring service and it is able to keep up. We are finding that this many instances in our environment is about as many as can be handled. We will need to deploy additional monitoring services. Luckily, there is no additional licensing costs to deploy additional monitoring services. For us, it's just an additional Azure VM.
    Incentivized
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    Return on Investment
    Google
    • Looker has a poignant impact on our business's ROI objectives. As an advertising exchange we have specific goals for daily requests and fill, and having premade Looks to monitor this is an integral piece of our operational capability
    • To facilitate an efficient monthly billing cycle in our organization, Looker is essential to track estimated revenue and impression delivery by publisher. Without the Looks we have set up, we would spend considerably more time and effort segmenting revenue by vertical.
    • Looker's unique value proposition is making analytical tools more digestible to people without conventional analytical experience. Other competing tools like Tableau require considerably more training and context to successfully use, and the ability to easily plot different visualizations is one of its greatest selling points.
    Incentivized
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    SolarWinds
    • Better customer service as it alerts me automatically to loss of service issues so I can react and either get things fixed before it impacts the customers or to let my management know as soon as possible
    • It helps me find expensive SQL so our customers get better performance and we make better use of our resources
    Incentivized
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    ScreenShots

    Looker Screenshots

    Screenshot of a Looker dashboard with a geo chart.

    SolarWinds SQL Sentry Screenshots

    Screenshot of SQL Sentry DeadlocksScreenshot of SQL Sentry Top SQL