Redgate SQL Toolbelt Essentials vs. SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Redgate SQL Toolbelt Essentials
Score 8.4 out of 10
N/A
Redgate's SQL Toolbelt Essentials includes industry-standard tools for SQL Server development & deployment, enabling users to include SQL Server databases in agile processes and enabilng developers to embed robust and scalable development practices.
$1,209
per year per user (1-4 users)
SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer
Score 6.8 out of 10
N/A
SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer (DPA) enables deep visibility into database performance and expert advice for performance optimization and tuning. What can you monitor with DPA? Oracle Oracle Exadata Oracle EBS Microsoft SQL Server Azure SQL Database Azure SQL Database Managed Instance MySQL DB2 SAP ASE Aurora MariaDB DPA monitors physical, virtual,…N/A
Pricing
Redgate SQL Toolbelt EssentialsSolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Redgate SQL Toolbelt EssentialsSolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer
Free Trial
YesYes
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeOptional
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Redgate SQL Toolbelt EssentialsSolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer
Considered Both Products
Redgate SQL Toolbelt Essentials

No answer on this topic

SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer
Chose SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer
Spotlight SQL Monitor. Spotlight is (in my opinion) better for monitoring general database and server issues. DPA is better (the best) at identifying performance issues.
Chose SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer
Overall DPA is the best tool that I have used because of its simple interface and ability to dig in within a few clicks to see the root of a performance issue, but Idera and SQL Sentry have some areas where they are better than DPA, such as blocking and deadlocks.
I also feel …
Chose SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer
We selected SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer to be able to monitor our database server.
Top Pros
Top Cons
Best Alternatives
Redgate SQL Toolbelt EssentialsSolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer
Small Businesses
DBeaver
DBeaver
Score 8.6 out of 10

No answers on this topic

Medium-sized Companies
DBeaver
DBeaver
Score 8.6 out of 10
Redgate Monitor
Redgate Monitor
Score 8.5 out of 10
Enterprises
DBeaver
DBeaver
Score 8.6 out of 10
Redgate Monitor
Redgate Monitor
Score 8.5 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
Redgate SQL Toolbelt EssentialsSolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer
Likelihood to Recommend
8.0
(14 ratings)
9.1
(113 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
-
(0 ratings)
8.6
(4 ratings)
Usability
7.0
(1 ratings)
9.0
(6 ratings)
Availability
-
(0 ratings)
9.1
(1 ratings)
Performance
-
(0 ratings)
9.1
(1 ratings)
Support Rating
8.6
(5 ratings)
9.3
(6 ratings)
Implementation Rating
-
(0 ratings)
7.3
(2 ratings)
Configurability
-
(0 ratings)
7.3
(1 ratings)
Ease of integration
-
(0 ratings)
8.2
(1 ratings)
Product Scalability
-
(0 ratings)
8.2
(1 ratings)
Vendor post-sale
-
(0 ratings)
9.1
(1 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale
-
(0 ratings)
9.1
(1 ratings)
User Testimonials
Redgate SQL Toolbelt EssentialsSolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer
Likelihood to Recommend
Redgate
We use SQL Compare to troubleshoot performance problems quite a bit since our data model is more like a template and not everything is 100% in sync and customization occurs between different client databases. We continually get pulled into performance issues and the developers will say Client A is performing different than Client B, why? Using SQL Compare, we usually find that one client was tuned and had indexes altered or added that weren't deployed to all clients or other objects weren't deployed correctly during the release. On the other hand, since our data model practices allow client databases to drift I tried to create a new golden image by trying to compare multiple databases based on the same data model and found it to be a very difficult process to complete using SQL Compare. SQL Compare gave me too much information and doesn't allow enough filtering to eliminate a lot of the noise.
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SolarWinds
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.
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Pros
Redgate
  • Simple and easy comparison of database schemas and data. Differences can be copied or synced from one database to another with a click of a button.
  • You can save "projects" so that you can easily rerun a previous comparison whenever you need to.
  • It has a very simple, easy to learn interface. I've never needed to read any documentation or watch any tutorials in order to figure out how to do something.
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SolarWinds
  • 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
Read full review
Cons
Redgate
  • Pricing.... I wish there was an inexpensive developer version I could buy for myself.
  • Portability.... I would like to use it from a flash drive so I can use it where ever I am asked to work.
  • Unbundled.... This may be available already but I dont' recall I can buy it cheaply as a stand-alone product. Its only part of the bundle - cost effectively.
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SolarWinds
  • 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.
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Likelihood to Renew
Redgate
No answers on this topic
SolarWinds
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
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Usability
Redgate
It's a good tool to have, but becomes expensive to buy a user license for each developer.
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SolarWinds
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.
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Support Rating
Redgate
They have a great community website where you can search for answers but are also very responsive when it comes to direct support.
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SolarWinds
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.
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Implementation Rating
Redgate
No answers on this topic
SolarWinds
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.
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Alternatives Considered
Redgate
I've used Visual Studio Database Projects for this type of work in the past with some success, but Redgate SQL Compare is faster, more transparent, and simply easier to use. Faster is self explanatory. More transparent, means that it's much easier to set up your desired options for schema change deployment scripts. Easier to use, It's really dead simple. Start a project, connect your source, connect destination, click compare.
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SolarWinds
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.
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Return on Investment
Redgate
  • Makes deployment fairly simple. Cutting our deployment time down.
  • With the SDK, we can customize our deployment process very quickly and easily.
  • History is not great, it does create scripts you can go back and see but it would be nice to have a quicker version view by object to save time.
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SolarWinds
  • 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.
Read full review
ScreenShots

SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer Screenshots

Screenshot of DashboardScreenshot of Alerts and reportsScreenshot of Application-centric view of DPAScreenshot of Blocking deadlock analysisScreenshot of Collaboration across teamsScreenshot of Intuitive performance monitoring