RE: TOAD vs BMC's XRAY

I don't think Rich likes DBXray. looks like he's gonna pass on it.

Tom Mercadante
Oracle Certified Professional

-----Original Message-----
From: Jesse, Rich [mailto:Rich.Jesse_at_qtiworld.com] Sent: Tuesday, July 22, 2003 2:49 PM
To: Multiple recipients of list ORACLE-L Subject: RE: TOAD vs BMC's XRAY

OK, I got the e-mail to try a trial of DBXray from BMC. Crap, I tell you. Crap. Crap, crap, crap. To be truthful, I'm not sure how much we pay for Spotlight, but for $2500/user, DBXray has a LOT to be desired.

I've apparently been spoiled by Quest's Spotlight interface. After a 15-minute trial of DBXray (granted, that's a little slim), here's what my kneejerk of what I see to be the advantages of Spotlight on Oracle (SoO) over DBXray (DBX):

1. It's in freakin Java. 60MB of mem to launch and it's sloooow, even on a 2.4Ghz w/512MB. Half of this is a Java Windohs service.
2. It doesn't understand ONAMES, so I would need to manually maintain yet another repository of Oracle Network connections.
3. SoO's color scheme is configurable. DBX seems to be fixed on a scheme of light gray on light blue. Very low contrast and I can't imagine this is viewable by color-blind folk.
4. SoO's interface is scalable. DBX's main dashboard is fixed in size.
5. No menu access to drilldowns in DBX. Difficult for neophyte or occasional users to locate the correct image map on the main dashboard of DBX.
6. Session drilldown has fixed set of columns in DBX. "Tune" button only provides weak text-only explain plan. SoO provides two different methods for doing explain plans out-of-the box, and is expandable with optional software like the-product-formerly-known-as-SQLab.
7. Very few options for data display in DBX. SoO, for example, allows you to turn off BCHR collection as well as configure which columns to return from V$SESSION for the session drilldown (see #6).

Man, there's so much more I don't want to take more time on it. SoO is clearly a *far* superior product when it comes to instance monitoring and tuning. I tried thinking of a single advantage of DBX over SoO, and I can't come up with one.

Now to see if DBX will actually uninstall...

Rich

Rich Jesse                           System/Database Administrator
rjesse_at_qtiworld.com                  Quad/Tech Inc, Sussex, WI USA

p.s. Jacques, you can tell Steve N (Quest Monitoring Product Manager) that I'm a "large" for Quest t-shirts, polos, and/or jackets. ;)

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Jesse, Rich
> Sent: Tuesday, July 22, 2003 11:27 AM
> To: 'ORACLE-L_at_fatcity.com'
> Subject: RE: TOAD vs BMC's XRAY
>
>
> I haven't used DBXray (yet -- maybe it's not an automated
> process to download a trial?), but I don't feel TOAD is the
> best at DB administration, especially for performance
> tuning/monitoring. Then again, it's been awhile since I've
> used TOAD's optional DBA module, since it's no longer
> available in the beta. For development, I think it's the
> best, especially at US $795/user. I've been a TOAD user
> since v4, when it was Jim McDaniel's freeware baby.
>
> For tracing into running SQLs I prefer using Quest's
> Spotlight. Aside from a slick interface (makes impressive
> screen shots for management-types), it is very easy to drill
> down into problem areas, like resource hogging sessions you
> mention. I still think that any tool requires knowledge of
> the underlying queries they use to fully understand what the
> tool is telling you, I just happen to prefer Spotlight's interface.
>
> If I ever get the email for the DBXray trial from BMC, I'll
> let you know what I think of that compared to the others.
>
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Fermin Bernaus [mailto:fbernaus_at_sammic.com]
> > Sent: Tuesday, July 22, 2003 11:20 AM
> > To: Multiple recipients of list ORACLE-L
> > Subject: TOAD vs BMC's XRAY
> >
> >
> >
> > Hi there,
> >
> > I am considering buying an administration tool and
> > programmer's tool. The two I know are Toad and BMC's XRAY but
> > since I do not know them very well I have difficulties
> > deciding which of them is the best. What I need more is to
> > tune the database, trace into time and CPU consuming SQLs, a
> > procedure / trigger editor and debugger.
> >
> > Or maybe you know better tools than these two... any
> > help will be greatly appreciated.
>

-- 
Please see the official ORACLE-L FAQ: http://www.orafaq.net
-- 
Author: Jesse, Rich
  INET: Rich.Jesse_at_qtiworld.com

Fat City Network Services    -- 858-538-5051 http://www.fatcity.com
San Diego, California        -- Mailing list and web hosting services
---------------------------------------------------------------------
To REMOVE yourself from this mailing list, send an E-Mail message
to: ListGuru_at_fatcity.com (note EXACT spelling of 'ListGuru') and in
the message BODY, include a line containing: UNSUB ORACLE-L
(or the name of mailing list you want to be removed from).  You may