For years database tools have been provided by third-party vendors.
Now, the likes of IBM and Oracle have started undercutting the
market.
Over the years, a thriving market in third party tools grew up
around DB2, Oracle and, to a lesser extent, Microsoft's SQL Server.
All the database vendors supplied tools to enable you to optimise
query speed, and identify and correct SQL statements that might be
causing you performance bottlenecks. But if you had performance
requirements which these often rather basic tools couldn't help you
meet, or if you used a number of different suppliers' databases,
you turned to third parties like BMC, Compuware or CA for
best-of-breed or multi-platform tools.
All that changed with the release of DB2 version 7 for S/390, when
IBM began to sell tools that challenged the best-of-breeds on their
own territory, but at much lower prices -in some cases, under 50
per cent. With recent releases of Oracle Enterprise Manager, Oracle
too has begun to square up to the third party tools suppliers.
However, since around 1999, the growing adoption of DB2 on non-IBM
Unix and NT platforms has stimulated tools vendors who had
previously concentrated on Oracle or SQL Server to port their tools
to DB2, or acquire DB2 tools specialists.
More competitive
Susan Lawson, of database consultants
and DB2 Performance Journal publishers Yevich Lawson and
Associates, sees IBM's move into the database tools market as part
of an overall effort to make mainframes more competitive, by
lowering total cost of ownership. 'To keep costs down, IBM now
offers alternatives to expensive third party software. There will
always be unique features and functionality in third party tools,
but the gap in performance is quickly closing.'
Some third parties ignored IBM's signals, refusing to move to new
pricing structures, meaning that for customers who used their
tools, the cost of maintaining DB2 could be higher than the cost of
owning it, Lawson said.
Other analysts concur. 'IBM made an aggressive entry into the
mainframe based DBA tools and utilities market in 2000. The IBM
products are offered at considerably lower prices than competitive
mainframe tools and have received significant market acceptance,'
said IDC analyst Dick Heiman.
Implementation
Some users think so too. 'The migration
from BMC to IBM IMS Database Tools took eight weeks, including
planning and implementation, and was completed with no impact to
services and no additional headcount,' said Dave McLoughlin,
manager of systems support at SITA, the UK based provider of
information and telecom solutions to the airline industry.
In a March 2001 press release, announcing that it had released 37
tools in the six months since September 2000, IBM gleefully quoted
a submission to the US Securities and Exchange Commission from top
third party BMC. 'IBM continues to focus on reducing the overall
software costs associated with the OS/390 mainframe platform. IBM
continues, directly and through third parties, to aggressively
enhance its utilities for IMS and DB2 to provide lower cost
alternatives to the products provided by us and other independent
software vendors. IBM has significantly increased its level of
activity in the IMS and DB2 high-speed utility markets over the
last two years, and recently launched a significant research and
development commitment to compete in these markets.'
'Until six months ago, DB2 users had to choose from a small list of
high-priced tools vendors, such as BMC and CA,' said Janet Perna,
IBM general manager of data management solutions. 'The explosive
growth we've seen in this segment clearly points to the industry's
appetite for more cost-effective alternatives.' All the tools are
priced using the Value Unit methodology, which provides lower
prices per MSU (millions of service units) for larger systems.
Analyst Datapro thinks third parties can still have the edge in
terms of efficiency, however. The IBM online reorganisation
utility, for example, makes heavy use of the DB2 buffer pool, which
slows performance. 'CA's online reorganisation utilities use their
own buffer pool to avoid this,' Datapro said, adding the CA utility
also makes more efficient use of CPU than IBM's.
To address query response issues on DB2 and other RDBMSs, CA offers
a performance monitoring tool, DBVision, acquired when it took over
Platinum Technologies. Candle Corporation's tools for DB2 lifecycle
support include the DB/Explain SQL optimisation tool.
Compuware has Strobe DB2, which identifies the individual SQL
statements and DB2 system services that cause excessive CPU time,
or wait time, within online and batch applications. When used with
Compuware's APMPower SQL Analysis Feature, it provides
recommendations for changing SQL statements and DB2 database
definitions to improve performance. Users can also analyse SQL
statements interactively to see what impact changes will have on
performance.
Precise Software provides performance management solutions for DB2,
SQL and Oracle. The software sits on top of the database and
monitors its performance, pinpointing the cause of any performance
degradation. Precise/Indepth for DB2 has a built-in methodology
that automatically identifies and resolves performance
bottlenecks.
While IBM may be squeezing third party tools off the mainframe, new
vendors are rushing in with offerings for DB2 on Unix and NT. 'The
growing need for DB2 tools in the four main tool areas -
performance monitoring, change management, SQL tuning, and
utilities - has forced vendors who have traditionally supported
Oracle, Sybase or DB2 on OS/390 to develop offerings for DB2 on
Unix/NT,' explained Mark Shainman of Meta Group.
DB2 momentum
'The growing presence and momentum of DB2
on Unix and Windows is creating opportunities for ISV providers of
server database tools who have traditionally focused exclusively on
Oracle,' agreed Gartner analyst Jon Rubin.
The reason for the rush to DB2 on midrange systems, Shainman said,
is that it's emerged as the low-cost/high-end option against
Oracle's high-cost/high-end and Microsoft's low-cost/low-end DBMSs.
By 2002, Meta estimates DB2 will have at least 20 per cent of
Unix/NT database revenue, reaching market share parity with Oracle
by 2005.
Off the mainframe, the star third party DB2 tool suppliers are
Quest and DGI, formerly Database Guys. While Quest has a long and
solid track record supplying tools for Oracle, DGI has always and
only worked with DB2 on Unix.
Quest Software offers the most complete tool suite for DB2,
according to Meta. The Quest Central Suite includes Performance
Monitoring, SQL Tuning, Database Administrator, and Space
Management Utility. These tools mirror Quest offerings for Oracle,
although the suites have different pedigrees. Quest took on a large
contingent of DB2 specialists from Platinum, when that company was
swallowed up by CA. 'This helps explain why the initial version of
Quest Central for DB2 is a relatively mature-looking database
administration toolset,' said Gartner's Rubin. Quest is now working
on a version for DB2/390.
Quest has also branched out with tools for SQL Server. Rubin says
its existing products for Oracle are facing a strong challenge from
new features added to Oracle Enterprise Manager along with 9i, and
the company also has to integrate some fairly disparate Oracle
tools to create something as cohesive as Quest Central for
DB2.
Database-Guys offers SQL-Guy and Wise-Guy for SQL and DBMS
performance monitoring. DGI has made joint product announcements
with IBM, and Hewitt Associates, a global management consulting
firm specialising in human resource solutions, and a regular
show-house customer for new IBM products, has implemented the
entire DGI portfolio.
SQL-Guy provides instantaneous real-time analysis of the most
costly SQL statements in any workload mix. 'Often the primary
culprits of slow application performance are SQL statements having
exorbitantly high execution costs,' said DGI president Scott Hayes
'At one customer site, SQL-GUY 2.2 helped the DBA team reduce
Siebel 2000 batch processing time by 75 to 80 per cent, within 24
hours of installing the tool.'
Often a single SQL statement can be found to be the source of a
performance problem, according to Martin Hubel, an independent
consultant specialising in DB2 performance. 'The statement uses
hundreds or thousands of times more resources than it should. Other
DB2 problems are cumulative. They can consist of a simple statement
or series of modules that use as little as 20 per cent more
resources than they should. But if this code is executed
frequently, it can be at least as devastating to system performance
as the more obvious SQL problem.'
Another factor affecting performance is the number of rows that
must be retrieved and examined by DB2 to build the answer set for
the query, Hubel said. 'If the indexes within the physical design
do not adequately support efficient access, DB2 may have to examine
many rows to see if they qualify.'
A new kid on the row is tackling the indexing issue. Bath, UK based
CopperEye has developed a revolutionary database indexing
technology they claim will have a ten-fold-plus impact on Oracle
performance.
CopperEye has two core products. Adaptive Addressing Intelligent
Indexing improves existing Oracle performance by directly replacing
conventional indexes. CopperEye claims this product requires no
additional skills, and is quickly and easily installed using the
Oracle Data Cartridge interface.
Adaptive Addressing Custom Indexing, on the other hand, is a set of
APIs for application developers. Integrated into new applications
instead of conventional indexes, it has achieved forty-fold
performance improvements in CopperEye's test environments.
Logica evaluated Adaptive Addressing for a high performance
business critical solution for a FTSE 100 client. Comparing it to
'a leading relational database', using 'a very broad range of
transactional tests', they found that queries on the data had
virtually no effect on the rate at which they were able to
simultaneously insert data. 'This is a critical factor when having
to make bottom line business decisions with real time information.
The results showed Adaptive Addressing to be at least 16 times
faster on insert and query transactions than the relational
database.'
CopperEye plans to move its technology to other rdbms platforms.
They'd better not hang about, if Gartner's Rubin's got it right.
'Longer-term, increasingly strategic sales into Fortune 1,000
enterprises, with typically three or more database management
systems, will place a premium on heterogeneous DBMS support. By
2004, more than half of independent software vendor (ISV) sales of
database administration tools will come from integrated suites with
heterogeneous support for Oracle, SQL Server and DB2.'
Sustainable gains
So the gains IBM is making against
the third party suppliers, with their multi-vendor approach, might
not be sustainable in the long term, unless customers can be
convinced that IBM fully appreciates that it's operating in a
multiple database world.
That's not the message that's coming across. On the mainframe at
least, IBM seems to be taking an aggressively DB2-centric approach.
'We are not developing tools on a DB2 release schedule,' said Dan
Wardman, IBM's director of data management tools. 'We won't wait
for new versions of DB2 to make enhancements to the tools. We're
going to give you new and enhanced functions quickly, and we're
going to add new tools to our portfolio continuously. We are
working on improving the integration of all the tools. They can all
be invoked through DB2 Admin Tool or DB2 Control Centre, and the
level of integration between tools is improving all the time.'