Databases: Tools of the trade
- Posted:
- 15:34 20 Dec 2001
- Topics:
- Mainframes | Databases
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.
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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.'