Eyeing the database - Trade Inc's use of Savant Corp's Q Diagnostic DBMS software - Company Operations - Brief Article

Software Magazine, Nov, 1997 by Deborah Radcliff

Most database administrators scroll through pages of alphanumeric text and tables to gather diagnostic information. Paul Meadow has a better system. He sees all his vital DB information in a single display that looks like a set of aircraft controls. On the left side of his screen, two ramps indicate the rate of reads and writes per minute. In the center, an eyeball-shaped icon shows how much memory is in use.

Meadow, who manages two Oracle databases for Trade Inc., uses the Q Diagnostics tool from Savant Corp. His San Mateo, Calif.-based company resells import/export sales lead information and downloads 100Mb of data daily. "Before Q, I managed by feel," says Meadow. "I didn't know there was a problem until it happened."

Q Diagnostics includes icons that indicate both bottlenecks and database hit ratios. More than just a friendly GUI, the Q tool offers actual database diagnostics. If the databases malfunction, an icon heats up to yellow or red to indicate the level of severity; the user then clicks the aggravated icon to get a description of the problem. "This is the first really visual management tool I'd seen," Meadow says. "That's what made it stand out."

While the product is currently available only for Oracle databases, Savant plans to launch a networked-PC diagnostics tool based on the same technology next spring. The company also plans to deliver Q for Sybase and Microsoft SQL.