We all remember Abbott and Costello’s skit “Who’s On First?”. If you haven’t seen it, I highly recommend you pop over to YouTube and give it a watch. It has become one of the legendary classic comedies of all times, with Costello not knowing baseball…

The backend repository for the Foglight Performance Investigator is based on Infobright, an analytics engine for machine generated data. However, you can connect natively via anything that can connect to PostgreSQL.

The schema reference for Performance…

As we continue our navigation of Spotlight on SQL Server Enterprise and we can diagnose an alarm that triggers. Let us see what setting caused an alarm to trigger. The fact is when you start monitoring an Instance it is assigned the preset “Factory Settings…

Just the facts! Part 2

Acknowledging Alarms in Spotlight on SQL Server Enterprise

Now that we have establish a view of the facts let’s see what we can do with them. Some on these alarms are set by default to be acknowledged before they will clear for…

When a large customer appreciation company needed to categorize their Oracle auditing data by region, SharePlex came to their rescue.  They were already using SharePlex’s Change History feature to track the userid’s, timestamp, before and after data values…

The original “Just the Facts” blog I discussed how to see just the Alarms displayed in “Spotlight Today” within Spotlight on SQL Server Enterprise. Now it is time to see what we can do with those Facts or Alarms. Spotlight comes with factory settings…

One of the big new features of Toad Data Point 4.1 release is a 64-bit installer offering.

There is a unified installer that contains both a 32 and 64-bit Toad Data Point 4.1 installer.

(Note:  The Toad Data Point beta will only come in a 64-bit installer…

I once attended an excellent training on giving effective software demonstrations, and the main point was simple: Don’t make your audience wait - show them the good stuff FIRST!

So here it is, in just three steps in Spotlight on SQL Server Enterprise…

SharePlex peer-to-peer setup

Peer-to-Peer replication (P2P) allows users on multiple databases to make changes concurrently to the same data, while SharePlex replication keeps all of the databases synchronized. Peer-to-Peer replication is not appropriate…

DevOps has been pervasive within Application Development for several years, but the database environment is so different and sensitive in nature, making database development a barrier to an end-to-end DevOps strategy.

The most important element of DevOps…

I often get stunned silence when I present how to profile PL/SQL objects using Toad for Oracle’s PL/SQL profiler. Using Toad’s Profiler is a fast and easy way to find bottlenecks in PL/SQL code, esp. SQL statements, and determine next steps to tune…

When very large tables are out of sync on the target and Compare is not a suitable sync option, it requires a set of coordinated steps to bring them in sync with the source tables. This is especially true if the downtime on the source table is not acceptable…

I'm very happy to report that a new release of Spotlight on SQL Server Enterprise (version 11.7) is now available.  This is a relatively minor release, mostly including fixes, although there are two enhancements worth mentioning.  One that has been…

Whether it’s hitting sys.dm_io_virtual_file_stats DMV with calculated queries, collecting Perfmon Disk Counter statistics, reviewing Resource Monitor Disk information, or keeping your storage admin close by, I/O issues are all too familiar a concern.…

I had a question recently from a customer. They were asking how to keep track of inactive SQL Server instances in Foglight so that the data can be removed. A flip side of this would be to check what instances they have being monitored vs. what is supposed…

“The most significant business benefit of DevOps is faster delivery of features.”

If most of the people you asked about DevOps told you that, wouldn’t it be worth a try?

Think of how much innovation DevOps adoption could introduce to…

I get this question at least once a month and it has to do with transferring Toad for Oracle user settings from one version to an updated version. When you install a new version of the Toad for Oracle 2016 Suite, the installer does a side-by-side installation…

Friends in High Places

I’m starting a blog series about our Toad solution family, and how it’s changed lives for almost 20 years now.  Sometimes a vendor’s product does something extraordinary for its customers.  The stories you read…

Configuring alarms in Spotlight on SQL Server Enteprise is quite easy. Configuring alarms across multiple connections, however, wasn’t always so easy. In versions prior to 11.5, you were required to select a connection and then apply your configuration…

Toad for Oracle’s Query Builder window provides a quick method for creating the framework of a SQL queries (Select, Insert, Update, or Delete statement). Additionally, one can select Tables, Views, or Synonyms, join columns, select columns, and generate…

From large enterprises to small businesses, organizations today generally recognize the range of opportunities and potential benefits they can achieve by analyzing big data. Whether the plan is to draw from social media posts to create targeted marketing…

Business intelligence (BI) is not just for big corporations. In higher education, colleges and universities of all sizes rely on BI solutions to analyze data from multiple sources and deliver reports that help streamline administration and improve student…

In no uncertain terms, the use of predictive analytics is crucial for SMBs to remain competitive. A recent survey revealed that companies that rate themselves substantially ahead of their peers in their use of data are three times more likely to rate…

Data scientists are in high demand. Across a range of industries, organizations are searching for highly skilled data scientists (aka data analysts) who can make sense of the rapidly rising volume, variety and velocity of data available today. Those data…

Under the Hood: Change Management

In my two previous posts I covered performance management and database maintenance in Toad™ DBA Suite for Oracle®. I’ve been emphasizing how Toad complements Oracle Enterprise Manager (OEM) for most DBA tasks and can…