BMC Launches DB2 Tools

BMC

The SmartDBA products, unveiled Monday, include SmartDBA Cockpit, which gives database administrators a common Web-based interface to DB2, Oracle and SQL Server databases.

Contrary to what some vendors say, "most customers have more than one type of database," said Gene Austin, vice president and general manager of BMC's Enterprise Data Management group.

SmartDBA Cockpit is downloadable for free from the BMC Web site.

DBXray, costing $2,499 per user, provides visual diagnostics, monitoring the system for operating system issues, locking problems, cache hits and log issues.

Space Expert can snap into the cockpit to optimize database performance by managing disk space to help DBAs prioritize and execute the top maintenance tasks and predict failure points before the system fails. That software is $1,650 for Windows NT/2000 and $3,200 for Unix.

SQL Explorer tunes application performance and lets DBAs simulate query execution as if it were happening in a production system. That product is expected to ship in the second quarter and will cost $10,115 per departmental server.

These products are already available for Oracle databases. Smart DBA and DBXray will be available for Microsoft SQL Server in the second half of this year. The rest of the portfolio will follow, BMC said.

Solution providers say that even as database vendors strive to make their own offerings more automated, there remains a need for third-party tools that work across the major database lines.

"Cross-database support is a big competitive thing [as mixed environments proliferate," said Jason Black, director of infrastructure consulting group for MSI, an IBM partner based in Omaha, Neb. "Even five years ago, many customers were just mainframe shops, dumb tubes throughout. Now that is not the case. They're all mixed now--mainframes, Unix, AS/400, NT and [so it makes sense to go with tools that go across DB2, Oracle and SQL Server."

BMC, unlike other vendors, also offers database tools in the three major categories: performance management, administration and recovery, said Noel Jasmine, analyst for The Hurwitz Group.

Computer Associates International, IBM/Tivoli and Quest all offer tools in some of those spaces, but not all three, she said. "BMC is across all three categories and across all three databases," she said.

The dearth of DBAs knowledgeable about more than one major database is also a factor, she said. The database players are always trying to make their databases more manageable, more automated, and that's all well and good if you have a person dedicated to that environment. That's not always true. And since the vendors are selling databases, they won't spend anywhere near as much time making their tools easy to use," she said.