Enterprise Database Management at its Best!
August 15, 2016
Enterprise Database Management at its Best!
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Overall Satisfaction with DBArtisan
DBArtisan is an excellent tool for DBAs encompassing most of the day-to-day DB management tasks. I think the default user interface is fairly intuitive and easy enough to figure out most things out of the box. It's a great addition to Oracle Enterprise Manager (OEM), and it complements Toad/SQL Developer, which the development team uses. Although we're predominately an Oracle/PeopleSoft shop, we also have a few databases in MSSQL, which DBArtisan can connect to as well (though it requires a separate license). It's great to have one tool that can connect to all of the major RDBMS platforms, and be able to manage all DBs in the same interface.
- User interface is easy to use, and in some ways better than Toad. The left hand side shows all databases, and you can drill down to instance, storage, schemas, tablespaces, and performance views. The right hand side displays the details of the selected object.
- This is the best tool if you want to manage multiple RDBMS platforms in a single tool using the same familiar interface. Other third party tools can do it also, but it's not nearly as integrated as this, and may require additional plug-ins installed. DBArtisan excels at this, and can perform cross-platform data migrations easily.
- It has different DB analysts, which can help diagnose issues with performance, optimize storage, detect fragmentation, and plan for capacity growth. For almost any action you want to take, you can generate the DDL for preview, and/or schedule it to run at a specific time.
- DBArtisan lacks a utility that does schema or object comparisons, which is a feature in Toad. I find this useful in some situations where I need to find out all differences between Prod and QA for a given schema, for example. DBArtisan doesn't seem to have the capacity to do this.
- I wish there was a way for the tool to warn me before performing a long-running task. For example if I want to re-organize a large table or rebuild an index for a table with millions of rows, it should warn me before executing it, so that I may choose to do it in a different way. Sometimes if I let these long operations run for too long, it freezes the program and crashes DBArtisan. I would rather run it on the DB server, and run it in background so that it doesn't time out, if DBArtisan gave me a warning before execution.
- Idera has taken over Embarcadero. I never heard of or dealt with Idera for support. I don't know if they have same the quality support as before.
- It has a positive ROI on our organization. It's better than OEM and SQL Developer. Although the license could be expensive, it is perfect for large organizations, especially with multiple RDBMS platforms.
- Most features are redundant between DBArtisan and Toad. I would not recommend using both if you already own one of them. Just download the trial for the one you're not using, and see what works best for your organization.
- DBArtisan is great for DBAs and would be my personal preference. Toad is good for developers and DBAs alike but I feel like sometimes the interface is too busy and too clumsy to use.
Overall excellent tool for DBAs. Seamless cross-platform integration, which is rare (or non-existent) among its competitors. The "monitor" helps the DBA to see everything that's going on in the database. Similarly, the interface is well-organized so that you can navigate to most things with a few simple clicks. The tool is fast and has intuitive wizards that helps the DBA become more productive.