3rd Party Tools???

Folks, We're currently looking into acquiring 3rd party tools to aid us in performance tuning, reorganization, and administration. Could you folks provide some feedback. The information I'm interested in is 1) Do you feel it is necessary to look outside of Informix? 2) Do these products really provide a significant return? 3) What benefits do these tools provide. 4) Who's Good? Platinum, BMC, SQL Power Tools Any info you can provide would be welcome. Examples? Thanks in advance, Scott H.

In article <8br5qq$8pp$1@news.xmission.com>, "Henderson, Scott" <SHenderson@purolator.com> wrote: > > Folks, > > We're currently looking into acquiring 3rd party tools to aid us in > performance tuning, reorganization, and administration. Could you folks > provide some feedback. The information I'm interested in is > > 1) Do you feel it is necessary to look outside of Informix? > This depends on environment. Do you have a lot of servers to manage ? Do you have enough knowlegeable persons who can tune the servers ? Performance tuning and achieving preferred results is relatively easy as compared to the Oracle databases. > 2) Do these products really provide a significant return? Again this depends largely on the environment. Lets say you are a retail vendor like Walmart. It would be beneficial to have these packages so that the implementation of such (tuning) efforts can be materialized easily. > 3) What benefits do these tools provide. Must definitely depend on the tool itself. What instructions do you provide for the tool. One can change parameters that might result in much much poor performance than what you are experiencing. > 4) Who's Good? Platinum, BMC, SQL Power Tools > BMC is quite popular I suppose. > Any info you can provide would be welcome. Examples? > Having said these, personally I would prefer the good old manual approach. Performance tuning is a challenge and it always is a problem. Many factors affect performance. Whatever method you use eventually keep in mind that while changing parameters do it one at a time and observe the results and analyze. This is a complete trial and error process that will need time to obtain the best and optimal results. HTH Ram S. > Thanks in advance, > > Scott H. > > Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/ Before you buy.

We had a 90 day eval of BMC Patrol, which was running with IDS 7.3. We discovered that it crashed our engine periodically, so we un-installed it. (I can only hope that BMC has since fixed that bug....). BMC is very expensive -- at our shop, the BMC licenses, maintenance, and support were about half of what Informix was. I've since discovered that I can monitor just about anything I want to using shell scripts to execute onstat commands and SQL queries, which was essentially what BMC was doing. The only real advantage I saw to using BMC over some home-grown scripts was that BMC's programs were already written. "Henderson, Scott" wrote: > Folks, > > We're currently looking into acquiring 3rd party tools to aid us in > performance tuning, reorganization, and administration. Could you folks > provide some feedback. The information I'm interested in is > > 1) Do you feel it is necessary to look outside of Informix? > 2) Do these products really provide a significant return? > 3) What benefits do these tools provide. > 4) Who's Good? Platinum, BMC, SQL Power Tools > > Any info you can provide would be welcome. Examples? > > Thanks in advance, > > Scott H.

Vickey Crouch wrote: > We had a 90 day eval of BMC Patrol, which was running with IDS 7.3. We > discovered that it crashed our engine periodically, so we un-installed it. > (I can only hope that BMC has since fixed that bug....). BMC is very > expensive -- at our shop, the BMC licenses, maintenance, and support were > about half of what Informix was. > > I've since discovered that I can monitor just about anything I want to using > shell scripts to execute onstat commands and SQL queries, which was > essentially what BMC was doing. The only real advantage I saw to using BMC > over some home-grown scripts was that BMC's programs were already written. > > If you used BMC Patrol and it crashed your engine then you had something > wrong. We use Patrol for production monitoring and have absolutely no problem. > If you just downloaded a demo version and did not have BMC in to assist you in > doing the trial, then you barely scratched the surface of the products > capabilities. Right out of the box, the Informix knowledgemodule will monitor > approx. 70 items and only needs threshhold adjustments for your specific > environment. > You cannot write everything in scripts that Patrol will monitor. The latest > release of the Informix KM, which will be available in May, also includes an > "Advisor" that will make some intelligent suggestions about tuning and such, > much as the Patrol/Oracle "Advisor" does now. > > "Henderson, Scott" wrote: > > > Folks, > > > > We're currently looking into acquiring 3rd party tools to aid us in > > performance tuning, reorganization, and administration. Could you folks > > provide some feedback. The information I'm interested in is > > > > 1) Do you feel it is necessary to look outside of Informix? > > 2) Do these products really provide a significant return? > > 3) What benefits do these tools provide. > > 4) Who's Good? Platinum, BMC, SQL Power Tools > > > > Any info you can provide would be welcome. Examples? > > > > Thanks in advance, > > > > Scott H.

In article <38E21405.978D6001@swbell.net>, Vickey Crouch <vcrouch@swbell.net> wrote: > We had a 90 day eval of BMC Patrol, which was running with IDS 7.3. We > discovered that it crashed our engine periodically, so we un- installed it. > (I can only hope that BMC has since fixed that bug....). BMC is very > expensive -- at our shop, the BMC licenses, maintenance, and support were > about half of what Informix was. > > I've since discovered that I can monitor just about anything I want to using > shell scripts to execute onstat commands and SQL queries, which was > essentially what BMC was doing. The only real advantage I saw to using BMC > over some home-grown scripts was that BMC's programs were already written. > > "Henderson, Scott" wrote: > > > Folks, > > > > We're currently looking into acquiring 3rd party tools to aid us in > > performance tuning, reorganization, and administration. Could you folks > > provide some feedback. The information I'm interested in is > > > > 1) Do you feel it is necessary to look outside of Informix? > > 2) Do these products really provide a significant return? > > 3) What benefits do these tools provide. > > 4) Who's Good? Platinum, BMC, SQL Power Tools > > > > Any info you can provide would be welcome. Examples? > > > > Thanks in advance, > > > > Scott H. > > Way to go Vicky. Sure this emphasizes the fact that no matter what tool is available there is nothing that is equal to get what is required. What I am trying to say is that all installations are unique and so are the requirements for monitoring performance. So there cannot be one tool that can do all the magic. Also this is what that provides a secure job for DBA's. Thanks Ram S. Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/ Before you buy.