IDERA’s Precise Application Performance Platform offers users a comprehensive monitoring tool designed to assist in identifying issues that can be addressed to improve performance. It’s a great instrument which can provide insight into all of your applications whether they are located on-premises or live with a cloud provider.
One arena where Precise really shines is when it is used to monitor your organization’s databases. Precise for Databases contains a wealth of features that make it the right tool for almost any type of database implementation. Let’s take a deep dive and take a closer look at why you should use this tool to find performance gains for your databases.
Multiple-Platform Support
Let’s face it. There is very little chance that you work in a shop that only has one flavor of database in operation. DBAs and developers need to be conversant with the intricacies of multiple platforms. They certainly don’t need any extra complexity introduced to their daily work activities.
Precise provides a consistent and user-friendly interface across various database systems. Oracle, Microsoft SQL Server, SAP Sybase, and IBM DB2 are all supported by this flexible monitoring tool. This minimizes the learning curve for your team and allows them to use identical processes to address similar problems on diverse platforms.
High Frequency and Low Overhead Data Sampling
The last thing you need is a monitoring application that negatively impacts your system by requiring excessive resources. This problem is nonexistent when working with Precise for your databases. The tool employs an accurate sampling technology that requires low overhead and will not degrade your system’s performance. Your databases will be sampled once per second throughout the day with the data stored in Precise’s data repository where it is easily accessible to address problems or analyze performance.
Easily View Findings
A primary reason for monitoring your databases is to find issues that may be impacting their performance. Precise makes this easy by displaying its findings in a designated area of your workspace. It supplies an overview of the potential issues and offers recommendations for correcting the problems, listing all solutions that may be applicable in your situation.
Display Execution Plans
Identifying the SQL statements that are consuming the most system resources is key to improving the performance of your databases. Precise locates these statements and provides a detailed explanation of their execution plans. This process uses the actual plans used by your system as opposed to estimated plans. Using this information you can quickly establish which SQL statements need to be optimized.
Tune Database Objects
Sometimes it is not realistic to modify SQL statements designed to access objects. In these cases, Precise can tune the objects to enhance performance. The tool identifies and displays details on active objects that can point to candidates for optimization. Some examples of this feature in use are:
- Examining an object’s space usage over time to observe its growth and make informed decisions regarding the amount and location of its storage allocation.
- Analyzing the effects of configuration changes and how they impact resource consumption. Changes can be tracked over time for easy comparative analysis.
- Identify the busiest tables in the system so they can be put on a proper maintenance schedule to avoid future problems.
Perform Hypothetical Analysis
Evaluate the effects of recommended tuning processes by using Precise’s “What-If” modeling. This feature enables you to avoid the pitfalls of making changes that might hurt a production database. SQL statements that would be negatively impacted by the proposed changes are identified and the tool displays the benefits and disadvantages of performing the planned modifications.
View Optimization Recommendations
You can display indices and statistics regarding a selected table that are recommended by Precise as candidates for optimization. This feature presents an SQL optimizer with a great place to start that will get the most immediate results.
Intelligent Performance Tuning
One of the workspaces that comprise Precise displays details gathered from the “SmarTune” process. “SmarTune” periodically analyzes a database’s performance data to discover areas that can be optimized. The type of data provided includes lists of objects subject to heavy activity, problem SQL statements that require tuning, and instance events. The workspace also offers the user a list of hyperlinks to launch other tabs to facilitate your optimization efforts.
Precise for Databases equips your database professionals with an easy to use monitoring solution that can increase your system’s performance and increase the team’s productivity. The tool will help you uncover the reasons behind slow database performance by pointing out the specific objects and SQL statements that need to be addressed. All performance data is archived and can be used for capacity planning and analysis. Precise is sure to discover ways you can optimize your databases from a central platform. Now that’s a good thing.