CA Offers New Database Performance Analysis Tool

In a bid to unify database performance management, CA on April 16 introduced an advanced analysis and diagnostic tool for its database management product.

Dubbed CA Insight Database Performance Monitor for Distributed Databases, the performance analysis tool allows administrators to monitor both the real-time and historical performance of all an enterprise's databases from a single window. Featuring a database quality-of-service index, it synthesizes multiple performance indicators and presents the status of each database as a single, color-coded and numeric indicator.

Users also can view specific database server conditions such as inadequate free space, I/O bottlenecks and high CPU utilization. Through its integration with CA's browser-based, multidatabase administration tool - CA Database Command Center - CA Insight DPM for Distributed Databases enables customers to address potential performance issues before they affect the business, officials at the Islandia, N.Y., company contend.

CA Database Management also includes new releases of CA TSreorg for Distributed Databases and CA Fast Unload for Distributed Databases, as well as CA Database Command Center, which is available to customers for no charge. When combined with CA Insight DPM for Distributed Databases, these products enable users to manage multiple databases and database types with a single product license, reducing the cost and complexity for managing large database environments, officials added.

CA officials said this release signals the beginning of a new strategy for database performance management integration. IT organizations can now gather performance information from databases across the enterprise and deliver that data to CA Unicenter Network and Systems Management, officials said.

"As part of this strategy we are delivering deeper integration between CA's database management products and our systems, network and application management products, thereby extending the view of database performance to IT operations staff," said Rick Bolesta, vice president of development for CA's database management product line, in an interview with eWEEK. "Namely the non-DBA … that understands the systems from a systems view, a network view or an administration view."

CA plans to make the same database performance data available to its network and application performance management products - eHealth, Spectrum and Wily Introscope, Bolesta said.

Bolesta said CA Insight supports four database platforms: Oracle, IBM DB2, Microsoft SQL Server and Sybase.

"In addition, a customer can license one version of CA Insight and have support for all four databases," he said.

Bolesta touted the quality-of-service index as a boost to database administrators.

Copyright 2007 by Ziff Davis Media, Distributed by United Press International