In-depth applications performance management provider Precise Software Solutions on Monday will introduce a new release of its IBM DB2 Universal Database management tool targeted at large-scale DB2 Enterprise Extended Edition installations.
The Westwood, Mass., company will demonstrate its new Precise/Indepth for DB2 UDB Version 2.0 release for DB2 users at the International DB2 Users Group meeting in San Diego starting Monday.
The tool takes into account the complexity inherent in DB2 EEE sites that could use hundreds of database servers to store and process data. Managing the performance of such installations is difficult because they involve a lot of automatic distribution of SQL statements. DB2 EEE uses a single coordinator node with the intelligence to distribute data to each of the database servers in the installation. “Without adequate performance metrics from all the different data nodes, its harder to manage the application performance,” said a Precise official.
Precise is unique in its user-centric approach to performance management for DB2 and the applications that depend on it. Others, such as IBM itself, Quest Software Inc. and BMC Software Inc., take a more database administration or availability approach to management, the Precise official said.
Coupled with the Precise Interpoint tool for managing SAP applications, the performance management tools allow DBAs (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.
In addition, the tool allows DBAs to toggle between short-term database statistics and long-term statistics to get a better understanding of database performance over time. And it provides a warehouse of performance data that allows operators to perform trending to understand what is normal for their system. “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 official.
Precise, which has weathered the IT downturn better than most by continuing to produce a string of profitable quarters, will continue to move aggressively in the application management space with new offerings. It expects to release its new Precise/Indepth for Microsoft SQL Server by the end of this quarter.
The new Indepth DB2 release supporting DB2 UDB is available now and works with DB2 UDB on Unix, Linux Red Hat Version 7.0 in Intel hardware and on IBM AIX Version 5.1.