Hi, everybody. Welcome to our webinar today. My name is Tim Fritz. I'm the Product Manager at Quest for the Foglight product and also Spotlight Cloud. I'm joined today by Julie Hyman, who is the Quest product Manager for our Toad family of products, which we'd like to tell you more about today.
So Julie, I'll hand it off to you.
Awesome.
Thanks a lot.
Thanks, Tim. Great. Thanks for joining me here today. I'm going to give an overview of our database management tools here at Quest. It's a pretty wide portfolio, but I'll give you a brief overview of it so you understand what we have here. It's our database management portfolio, but we often call it our Toad Portfolio, because that is our flagship product. And as we dive into it more, I'll explain that.
Our productivity solutions we provide are for three different kinds of users. We have application or database developers, and we provide productivity solutions for them. As you know, you guys are living in a world of code. And all of your projects have to be delivered faster and with less risk. So we have solutions that can help you with that.
We also have solutions for the database administrator and all of the work that you have to do to keep your databases up and running in a healthy mode. So we have productivity tools that are fit for that as well.
And then, lastly, we also have tools within this portfolio that's really for the business or the data analyst. These tools grew up out of our unique and robust ability to connect to databases and also run queries and help folks who are not SQL gurus develop really robust SQL queries. And so that's why it lives under this umbrella of database management, even though these tools are specifically geared around the data rather than the data structures and data platforms.
So what are these tools? So first of all, we have two sets of tools within this portfolio under two major brands. There's the Toad tools. That's my beautiful Toad, the logo right here on the left. And then we have our ApexSQL byQuest tools. ApexSQL joined the Quest portfolio a few years ago, so it's new to us. Whereas the Toad tools have grown up with Quest. We've been with Quest-- the Toad portfolio has been with us-- since the early 2000s.
And a lot of folks know our flagship product, which is Toad for Oracle. But really, our Toad portfolio is much broader than that. And our ApexSQL portfolio has extended our capabilities. So we really cover a myriad of databases. I've listed just some of the major ones that our customers are using here on the screen.
Obviously, Oracle-- again, Toad for Oracle is our flagship product, but we cover Teradata. All of the Sybase-SAP product solutions, like ASE or SQL Anywhere, Amazon Redshift, PostgreSQL, SQL Server DB2, whether you're LUW, z/OS, or iSeries. So there's a wide variety of databases we cover. And if there's one thing about Toad and the Quest database management tools portfolio that people don't realize-- it's really that it goes beyond Toad for Oracle and covers all these databases.
So I'm going to give you a full list of the tools, starting with the Toad portfolio. There's obviously Toad for Oracle, which is our flagship product and been with us the longest. But some folks might not be realize that we also have a Toad DevOps Toolkit that lets you take all of that great work that you do in Toad for Oracle, around schema compares and change scripts and all of that stuff, and integrate it with your CI/CP pipeline. So if you haven't heard of that, there's Toad DevOps Toolkit.
We also have a Toad for DB2, for the LUW and z/OS products. A Toad for SQL Server. A Toad for SAP Solutions. You guys are getting the picture here, right? There's a Toad for everything.
Toad Edge is our newest product within the portfolio. And it's covering the open source database stack. So it's at a different kind of price structure than the rest of the products. And as I mentioned, it's the newest. So it's with the lightest amount of functionality but constantly growing with each release. We cover MySQL Maria, PostgreSQL. It actually covers Redshift as well, since that's a spinoff of PostgreSQL, in there too.
For Toad, Data Point is the product that's specifically, as I mentioned, for analysts, right? So it's geared, and really its focus, is on really robust SQL querying and SQL capabilities. However, it does have all of the navigation, data compare, and profiling. So it has a lot of deep functionality. And one of the unique characteristics about Toad Data Point is it's a single tool-- a single install-- that covers all of the platforms. It covers Oracle and DB2, including iSeries. It covers Snowflake and SQL Server, all of the SAP Solutions, Teradata, Vertica. So you name it, Toad Data Point covers it.
So it is our heterogeneous-- single heterogeneous-- product. It doesn't go as deep as some of the point products do-- into like DBA functionality. But if you're looking for a general tool that lets you connect to and work with all of your databases and data sources, Data Point is a great choice.
And then, lastly, within the Toad portfolio we have Toad Data Modeler as well. So if you're looking for a light data modeling solution-- maybe you're not an architect, but just a developer that needs something a little bit more robust than what's offered in Toad for Oracle or the Point Toad products-- Toad Data Modeler is also a great solution.
OK. So let me talk briefly about ApexSQL. So ApexSQL has come into our portfolio fairly recently. ApexSQL concentrates 100% on SQL Server. And so we've got Compare and Sync, Fundamentals-- which covers all sorts of basic activities. So it would be the equivalent, let's say, of a Toad for SQL Server, but on the ApexSQL foundation.
DevOps Toolkit-- so we have Toad DevOps Toolkit, over here on the left-hand side, specifically for Oracle and for supporting Toad for Oracle. But if you're working with SQL Server and you've got a robust CI/CP pipeline, you want to work your database activities into that, the ApexSQL DevOps Toolkit is a great choice. And Operations Toolkit.
And then, finally, I list on here Audit. So if you have any compliance-- requirements to be constantly auditing all of your production servers, SQL Server production servers, ApexSQL Audit is a great product to do that. It does exactly what it says it'll do. It's fairly straightforward, and gets the job done when it comes to auditing.
So that's the portfolio. So if there's one takeaway from the webinar today, it's for you to understand that, from a database management and productivity standpoint-- and most of these tools-- 99% of them listed here-- are tools that are installed on your desktop. And they're meant to make you more productive-- you as a database developer you as a DBA, or you as an analyst-- more productive with those data sources that you're connecting to.
Toad goes way beyond just Toad for Oracle. There is a Toad for that. We get constantly working with other database providers-- like we recently did with Snowflake-- adding it to Toad Data Point as a connection point so that we can cover all of the newest databases as they're coming out.
OK. So now you know that Toad and our affiliated products can cover a lot. So what? What's so great about Toad? Well, as I mentioned Toad has been in the marketplace for a long time. It's been the number one development tool-- certainly for Oracle. But with all the other platforms that we provide, we can take that usability, that user interface that our users that we grew up with on Oracle loved, and extend it to all of these other platforms.
So if you've been using Toad for Oracle or you've never encountered it before, if you turn to this tool, you can rest assured it's a tool that's been used by many, where the UI has really been crafted to be something that's meant for the user. It's highly customizable, right? It's been proof tested out in the market.
And so I just threw some quotes out here from some of our users just singing our praises. Which is always nice as a product manager for me to be able to put these quotes out here. But really, the tools that we're producing within this portfolio are tools that our customers love using.
So with having a wide portfolio, I can't go into all of the different capabilities of the products. If you've ever used a Toad product, you'll know that one of the things that you're probably sure of is that, even if you used it for years, you've just begun to scratch the surface of what it can do. They go very, very deep in lots of different areas. But let me just cover some of the basic problems that we solve.
First of all, what we're looking to do-- our overall goal with all of these products are, number one, to improve productivity, right? We're looking at that individual user and the task that they're doing. And we're looking at, how do we gain you more time in doing those things? That's one of our number one goals.
We're also there to make sure that you're improving the performance. So as you're writing code, as you're working with databases, we're always keeping that in mind-- giving you tools to help you manage and get the most out of those environments that you're working with.
We're concerned about the quality not just of our products-- which is always top in our mind-- but also the quality of the code, the quality of the products that you guys are putting out-- or I should say-- your work product that you're putting out, right? So we have lots of tools within our product that have to do with unit testing and team coding and collaboration.
And then, also, about reducing risk. And really those last two items there really are all about all of the efforts we are doing to make our products CI/CD compatible, right? We know that you guys are producing work product more quickly. You're having to introduce it into pipelines more quickly. At the same time, everybody's expecting that, even with the speed that you're achieving, to have less risk in your environment. And so all of those values are values that we hold as well. And so in our products, these are the four areas that we're always trying to add quality features around.
So just as an example, whenever we're adding something new into our products, it has to meet one of these four values-- we group them this way-- to make sure that we're achieving what we need for our users. OK.
So what does that mean? So I'll give you a couple of examples here, and a couple of screenshots from all sorts of different products that I just mentioned in the portfolio from ApexSQL to the individual Toad products. But we help you understand the database environment, right?
So as you're connecting to new environments, as you're expected to work with new platforms, we are there to help you make sure that you can connect to those environments and quickly understand what's in them, whether they're going through an ER diagram, looking at DDLs, being able to interrogate an object in that database and understand the SQL behind it very quickly. And we're doing this so we have reducing risk and also improving your productivity, right? The quicker you can get up to speed on the environments you work with, the better off you'll be.
Also, we want to track all the changes in that environment. So we have all sorts of interfaces here, making sure that the code that's written for that environment is the correct code, right? Whether that's actually building new tables, editing tables, putting stored procedures-- whatever that piece of code is contributing to, we want to make sure you've got the right version. So there's all sorts of things in our products around team coding and unit testing.
We work very closely with your source control systems to make sure that you're checking in and checking out appropriately and merging appropriately, right? So we wanted this to be very intuitive. We don't want it to be an onerous process. We want it to be locked into your daily work processes and not something that's really difficult for you to adopt. So it's as intuitive as possible. We want it to improve your standards, right, with code analysis and, as I mentioned, team coding. We're constantly trying to up your game and enforce your standards.
And then, also, we want to make sure we're working with all of the standard source code systems, so that you are making sure that every work product that you do is being checked in and checked out appropriately.
We have automated code reviews-- kind of speaking to what we were before-- every piece of code you've written can be held to a certain standard. And that's not just a generic standard of what does good code look like, but your standards in your environment, highly customizable. You can share your rules across your teams. And so that every time you're checking things in and checking things out, it's going through this automated code review, and flagging any issues that need to be addressed, right?
Again, we want it to be intuitive. It has to be fast. It has to be customizable. It has to be complete. And it has to work with CI, right? We want to make sure that this is something that you can include in your pipeline. So as you're accelerating your coding-- so that you can get into these faster and faster delivery pipelines-- you are automating these code reviews. So you're not sacrificing the quality just to get the speed.
And then, lastly, again, scratching the surface-- I could spend at least one full hour going into just one of the products that I listed on that previous slide-- but looking at performance bottlenecks, we do this specifically well in Oracle, but all of our products-- Toad for SQL Server, Toad for DB2-- we can have similar capabilities.
And so what we're doing is-- this is not something that's running 24/7 on your server. It's not an agent situation. But when you need to, when it's required, you can open up the tool and look at what's been happening and look at performance areas, to try to get some idea of where you should be focusing your time, right?
So it's a highly visual environment. It works across all versions of Oracle particularly. But honestly, again, as I mentioned, this is not just Oracle. It's across all the platforms we support. It's got code coverage. We can actually help you display where things are not being executed, to help you in debugging. It's got fantastic debugging features.
And integration-- right? So we can go directly from this into our SQL tuning and optimization category. So we have fantastic SQL tuning and optimization. And again, it's not just Oracle. We've got it for DB2 z/OS, DB2 LUW, SQL Server, SAP, et cetera. And so this is really making sure that the code that you're writing-- and, more importantly, the code that you're promoting into your environments-- is running well, right? That it's optimized for whatever values and goals you're trying to achieve.
Maybe it's not speed that you're looking to reduce, but you want to reduce CPU load, right? You guys have to decide what's important to you when you optimize your code.
And just to speak a little bit about SQL tuning, right? How hard can it be, right? If you've ever looked out and looked at all the number of books out there, all about Sybase performance and SQL Server performance optimization, Oracle performance optimization, it's really quite difficult. So I have this one little example which I love to drag out. It was actually created for me by our previous product strategist, John [INAUDIBLE]. But we put this one very simple query through our optimization engine, and so thinking of how different ways we could optimize and rewrite this SQL statement.
It turns out that there are 30,490 ways to achieve this SQL statement by changing its structure, right?
And so our optimization engines within the product-- just you could simply submit a SQL statement like this to that optimization engine-- again, just through the normal UI. And when you do, you'll get all sorts of information. So again, for this one little SQL statement, you can see what kind of optimization details came out, right?
So yes, there were 30,491 semantically equivalent SQL statements investigated. But really, there's only 985-- thank goodness-- alternative plans that are produced. Because 29,000 of those rewrites would have the exactly identical execution plan, right?
And so you can go from here, looking at those 985 different ways that you could write this and, again, use the tool further, right, to look at, hey, are there indexes that I can add? Help me narrow this down to the one or two things that I want to do to optimize this SQL statement, right? So we've got-- as I mentioned, you can generate some virtual indexes to check how that will actually help the run. And you can get best practices, where we'll actually guide you in what we think is the best way to write that SQL-- taking into consideration the values that you've put in, how you're prioritizing speed over CPU, et cetera.
So just a little note there on SQL tuning.
OK. So we have all of that. And again, I would say that's 1% of what we do with the products. I think you really need to open their products and start working with them to really understand the depth of what we do with all of our productivity tools. But I did want to mention that, whatever you're doing in there, we're always keeping in mind and supporting that CI/CP process where we can. And this is an area that we're continually investing in and expanding in.
So that if you are in Toad Edge, for example, and you have written some templates for schema compare and you want it to generate change scripts based on schema compare, you could take that, and you can add that very easily to whatever Jenkins process that you're running. So that you can take that hard work that you're doing on a day-to-day level on your desktop to make you more productive and make sure that those standards are also being promoted through all of the DevOps that you do.
So, in closing-- I'll just have one more anecdote that I'll tell you as we go here-- but we work with lots of analyst companies, as most software products do-- and one of our favorite quotes is that our users-- not us, but our users-- that Forrester, in this case, talked to-- indicated that they were 40% more productive and their workday using Toad.
And so thinking about these products-- maybe you're using SQL Developer today or you're using Microsoft Management Studio and you feel like you're happy with these products today-- if you were to take a few moments and check out what the Toad products offer, I think you might see that, yep, these products are doing similar things, but the way that we do our products, the way we approach the work, immediately makes you more productive with what you're doing.
I recently-- the anecdote I mentioned-- I recently was talking with a customer, just asking him about the products that he uses. He was not aware of Toad. He's a SQL Server person. So he'd never heard of Toad before. And talking with him about what tools he was using for schema compare. And we were just chatting about some new functionality that he was hoping for and different products he was looking at.
And so I asked him-- I said, you know what? Here's a four-minute video of how we do schema compare in Toad for SQL Server. Here's a link where you can download it. And here's a 90-day trial that I'll send you a key for. Just check it out.
He was so excited by what he saw. Because yes, it does schema compare, like the other tools that he was using. And he was using a tool that was a relatively cheap tool that he was using. But the value-add when he saw what he could do with Toad for SQL Server was incredible. And so he was already ready to buy that for his team.
So those are the stories that, as product managers, we love. Because they really show that we're not just hitting the functionality, but also the user experience within the product. So I highly recommend you to reach out-- to either go out and download a copy of Toad for Oracle, our flagship product, if you're working with Oracle. I recommend the DBA Edition. That's our highest edition. And it comes with optimization and benchmarking, which I didn't even touch on-- but a product that allows you to test performance and benchmark your performance very easily. Especially when you're talking about DevOps, that's really important to benchmark your performance-- to make sure that what you're putting into production is hitting those same benchmark results that you expect.
Anyway, the DBA Edition of Toad for Oracle is a great way to start, if you're working with Oracle. But if you're working with any of those other platforms, we offer free trials on all of those other products as well-- Toad for SQL Server. Toad for DB2. The ApexSQL Compare and Sync and Fundamentals, et cetera.
Or, even better, talk to your Quest rep. Explain to him the challenges-- him or her-- the challenges that you're coming against. And let them guide you into what kind of trial would be the best. And we have fantastic pre-sales folks, who, in the time I've taken here just to give you an overview, could go deep dive into any one of those particular products or platforms and what we offer. And you'll know very quickly, after looking at the screens and the workflows, how much time that we can save you with our tools.
So with that, I'll wrap it up. I do have my email here on the screen. I love talking to customers, or potential customers, about what problems they have and how we solve them or how we're not solving them. So please reach out with any questions. We'd love to hear from you.
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