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Precise Software Solutions Inc., a provider of in-depth applications performance management software, last week introduced the latest release of its IBM DB2 Universal Database management tool targeted at large-scale DB2 Enterprise Extended Edition installations.
Precise/Indepth for DB2 UDB Version 2.0 takes into account the complexity inherent in DB2 EEE sites, which often use hundreds of database servers to store and process data, according to Precise officials.
Managing the performance of such installations is difficult because it involves a great deal of automatic SQL statement distribution. DB2 EEE uses a single coordinator node with the intelligence to distribute data to each database server in the installation.
“Without adequate performance metrics from all the different data nodes, its harder to manage the application performance,” said a Precise spokesman in Westwood, Mass.
Precise employs a user-centric approach to performance management for DB2 and the applications that depend on it. Others, such as IBM itself, Quest Software Inc. or BMC Software Inc., take a more database administration or availability approach to management, Precise officials said.
Coupled with Precises Interpoint tool for managing SAP AGs applications, the performance management tools allow database administrators to improve performance by restructuring the underlying indexes to provide faster access to data.
Indepth for DB2 UDB Version 2.0 allows users to select a table and have DB2 recommend better indexes for it to access the data faster. It also allows DBAs to test the impact of any changes before they go into production—whether they are based on DB2 recommendations or initiated by the DBA.
The tool also allows DBAs to toggle between short-term database statistics and long-term statistics to get a better understanding of database performance over time. It provides a warehouse of performance data that allows operators to perform trend analysis.
“A DBA may find a statement thats causing a slowdown, but they dont know if its normal or abnormal over time. This lets you determine that very quickly,” said the spokesman.
Precise expects to release Precise/Indepth for Microsoft Corp.s SQL Server by the end of this quarter. The Indepth release supporting DB2 UDB is available now and works with DB2 UDB on Unix, Red Hat Inc.s Red Hat Linux Version 7.0 in Intel Corp. hardware and on IBM AIX Version 5.1.