Oracle: Tools for fools?

[Mike Fisher_5]

This is a bit like a similar situation I asked about 2 weeks ago

THE BACKGROUND:
I'm supplying an rp5470/2-way + VA to a client
Along with HP-UX 11i + Oracle licenses

A.N.Other company [ANO for short]will be configuring it & administrating it on a daily basis
[As you will note below they also seem very happy to spend loads of my clients money to make their own lives easier]

THE ISSUE:
Value for money

The client writes...
"The ANO team would like Precise because
- It's a good tool
- ANO have good experience of it
But it costs ??25-50k - which is as much as a complete new Server
- An alternative would be Quest at about ??5k,
but ANO have little or no experience of it"

WHAT I'VE DONE SO FAR:
Emailed to ANO a link to the Quest website
There they can download a trial version of...
QUEST CENTRAL for ORACLE SQL TUNING

MY QUESTION:
Are there other products out there that are worth a look?
What do you use & are you happy with the value you're getting from it?
Are these tools really necessary if you are knowledgeable & proficient at Oracle?

All advice & observations are very welcome

Kind regards - Mike

BTW I jest in the subject line
ANO are wise to work within their knowledge

[Massimo Bianchi · Accepted solution]

Hi,
not for pubblicity, i don't get any money for it:)

But i really love Quest software, and use it for Oracle performance and tuning quite every week.

I think it really deserve the money they ask for.


There are also the free tools from Oracle itself, there are a lot in the installation CD, in the OEM part (Oracle enterprise Manager). It works well, and its freeand plenty of oracle support at free, being included in your license.


Quest sw are more impressive, better look and feel, maybe some more functionality, but if you know oracle, you don't need it.

HTH,
Massimo

[twang]

I love Precise because we are runing Oracle Application on hpux 11i.
For other purpose, for example on going administration, I like sqlplus + shell script.

[Mike Fisher_5]

twang - I don't understand your answer

[A. Clay Stephenson]

My company use Quest Spotlight (for analysis) and Quest LiveReorg - for the "on the fly" fix. The DBA's are happy with both.

Me, I tend to be much more old school. Give me a sqlexplain, some graph paper, and a calculator (or log table) and I'm happy.

[Steven E. Protter]

Quest's Toad has been very good for us. We can't afford tools like Precise.

SEP

[Mike Fisher_5]

Anymore for anymore?

[twang]

Another tool I have evaluated before is DBArtisan, please visit the following link:
http://www.embarcadero.com/

[Mike Fisher_5]

twang - but what was your evaluation?

[Pete Randall]

Twang's being coy today!!

;^)

Pete

[Mike Fisher_5]

Pete - that deserves a 10 for making me laugh
Keep 'em coming

[Pete Randall]

Mike,

I call 'em like I see 'em!

I'd prefer to contribute something a little more meaningful to your discussion, but we're an Informix shop with no tools to speak of, so all you get is my pitiful sense of humor.


Pete

[Mike Fisher_5]

Pete - I told you deserved 10 well here it is

twang - congrats on the forage cap
When I get mine I'm gonna walk around with a sabre & yellow stripes down the sides of my PJ's
A horse, a horse - my kingdom for a horse

[Mike Fisher_5]

Guinness moment is here
Bunnies can wait

[Dave La Mar]

Mike -
Quest/Toad, in our shop, are the preference of our DBA's.

Best regards,

dl

[Chris Vail]

Our DBA's use Qwest/Toad, Precise, DBTuner, and anything else they can get their grubby mitts on. The latest/greatest is Pentasafe. Just between you 'n me: I wish they'd settle on a single tool and be done with it.



Chris

[Brian Crabtree]

In our shop, we don't use any tools. We have some homemade shell scripts to perform monitoring functions, and we generally use statspack and bstat/estat for performance tuning. We looked at OEM for monitoring once, but it didn't fit with what we wanted, Quest Live Reorg, but it didn't have enough features that we would want (this was in early stages of development for it and ability to handle a database crash were not good).

Brian

[Graham Cameron_1]

Here we have QuestSpotlight and Oracle OEM for the DBAs, Quest SQLNavigator and Toad for the developers, plus lots of home grown scripts, we all have our preference.

Clay - I'm with you on the graph paper, but log tables ! - Don't you have a slide rule ?

- Graham

[Mike Fisher_5]

Thanks all - I now have a feel for how to tackle ANO

[twang]

Please find uploaded is a precise evaluation report(tif format), I hope it can help you a bit.

[Mike Fisher_5]

Thanks twang
You're really motoring on the hats
Mike "Mirror, Signal, Manouevre, Crash, Burn" Fisher