DbVisualizer vs. SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer

Well suited for medium size to large Oracle system that includes a large and complex database schema with many database objects including functions and triggers. Also well suited for a medium size to large Microsoft SQL Server system with many complex database objects. Its SQL editor and query builder are well suited in developing complex SQL queries.

I believe that SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer is a great choice for an organization that does not have a specific DBA or one that is still growing into the role. SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer is filled with hints, tips, and explanations of the various readings and metrics. This is very useful to help understand what is happening and why, what it means, and what some potential solutions are towards remediating any issues. This is extremely valuable for our development team, allowing them to be more proactive with the queries they write in viewing how they perform and where bottlenecks might be.

Incentivized

• Provides simple access to all tables, indexes, views, triggers, stored procedures, etc., to just about every database on the market
• Allows me to develop and run queries in a simple, easy to read and understand manner
• Allows me to create entire new schemas as well as alter existing schemas
• Gives me access to databases without the need to install specific drivers for any particular database

Incentivized

• Ability to drill down to wait for the issue and have a clear path as to what may be causing the issue.
• Ability to quickly add a new target and the ease of installation and upgrades.
• Reporting features to group my most troublesome customers into a daily report in one email.
• Excellent customer support on any issues I can't immediately solve.

Incentivized

• does not handle lost connections well (specially after stopping a running query) (mysql). eg. after hitting stop, and then hitting run again, it can sometimes look like its running the query, but it isn't actually!
• filtering on databases window is clunky (why the need for filtering certain object types at a time? just filter everything, google style)
• altering table, adding columns (NOT to the end of the table's columns, but earlier) is not supported (mysql) even though the db supports it (alter table add column BEFORE..)

Incentivized

• Resiliency of the Monitoring checks after the server underwent maintenance reboot. My experience is the monitor (Action) needs to be started manually. If possible it can automatically detect service/server then start to monitor again when system is back up.
• Much lighter UI.
• Granularity up to minutes.

Incentivized

We never had problems with it. It is able to connect to all data sources (Oracle, Informix, DB2, SQL Server) that we currently use.

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

I use this tool for several hours each day, spanning many years in various projects. It's wide support for various database types while keeping consistency within the UI for each is important when working with various databases day in and day out.

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

Never used

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

[DbVisualizer] is pretty easy to use compared to IntelliJ because of it's simplicity. The performance is very good, it feels as good as a native application compared to the other two softwares I used for the same purpose. It's very cheaper compared to the other two tools and that's a big selling point.

Incentivized

I have used Spotlight (for Oracle on RAC) but it has been several years. The dashboard was crisp, clean, and intuitive, but the tool had a significant overhead. However, no competitor made a tool that met our needs at the time. I have also used Idera's SQL Diagnostic Manager in more than one company. That tool is helpful for a larger environment than we currently have. But I think it is better at alerting than DPA but worse at just about everything else. The good thing is you can flag an alert as acknowledged, so you stop getting emails. The bad thing is I don't think I could use it to troubleshoot issues like I do with DPA. I do not have enough experience to provide helpful feedback on the others selected.

Incentivized

• The only point I could potentially give is hours saved by having so many warehouses hooked up in one place vs. having to manage connection string changes/password updates across multiple applications... maybe 10% decrease in time spent managing connections? Mind you, I've had everything hooked up on DbVis for close to 6 years so it's hard to remember the "before times"

• Paid for itself in days. We had a stored procedure that could not meet its SLA, DPA highlighted the issue and contributed to the resolution.
• We had a stored procedure that we were able to calculate as running in 9 milliseconds, unfortunately, we had transactions coming in 7 milliseconds, resulting in duplicate transactions, indicating that a mutex function was needed.

Incentivized