We performed a comparison between IDERA ER/Studio and Quest Foglight for Databases based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out in this report how the two Database Development and Management solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI."The data modeling and reverse engineering features are most important to us."
"This application does a lot of things, as do competitor products, but the main reason to go with this product was the ability to create many automations, where we can improve our work and our process."
"The data modeling module is important to me because I am a database developer and designer... It's very fast, reliable, up-to-date, so easy to use, smooth."
"Modeling with Data Architect: We can quickly reverse-engineer a database from an existing database or create a model from scratch."
"Valuable features include the ability to visually represent what the database tables are going to look like and their relationships. Also, the ability to document the definitions of the tables and the columns that are in a table so that we can communicate what the data is and how it should be used."
"The most important features are logical and physical models that we can compare and develop. Also, the Data Dictionary can be created out of your studio. Finally, database schemas help understand the logic that's behind the scene, behind the SQL tables. Especially when there are a lot of them, the schemas help everyone understand the business processes."
"The reverse engineering is the most important feature."
"It does the job."
"The alarms alert proactively if there are any potential or ongoing issues with the databases that we support. That means we can take preventive or corrective action before the issue becomes a big issue. And the SQL PI features enable us to drill down into performance issues in our databases so that we can improve performance, which is important."
"One of the hardest things to do in database management is to evaluate performance deviation across time. The adaptive baseline that Quest is using is by far the most helpful. That doesn't necessarily mean I use it on a daily basis, but it is something that I have not been able to find in any other tool, at the same level."
"The PI module allows [my colleague] to identify which new indexes or modified indexes are going to make the biggest impact."
"Foglight's Change Tracking capabilities are another huge feature. It is wonderful to be able to do that. People don't realize the amount of information that Foglight gathers from a given server or instance. It gets down to the version of SQL, the disk array, everything that's there. Any change that's made, any upgrade to SQL, shows up on the dashboard almost immediately. You don't know how much time you save just having a tool in your back pocket that does that for you."
"Its reporting capabilities are immense."
"We can visualize all the different types of DB servers that we are monitoring in a single pane of glass. It uses a 360-degree overview of the database, for each of those databases that we are monitoring. That includes what kind of resource utilization is happening and what kind of DB parameters are getting monitored, as well as the different types of DB parameters that are being offered for each database type."
"The ability to monitor multiple database platforms streamlines our database operations. The single pane of glass is what we were really after when we picked Foglight. We knew we wanted something that could monitor cross-platform because it does save a lot of time to use the same tool. The one thing that I like with Foglight is that we don't have to install anything locally, like agents, directly on the database servers. That was also a big seller because it simplifies things."
"The real-time activity screens are also helpful... if there is something that is running slowly, we can eliminate the database as being an issue and perhaps look at the server, network activity, or something outside of the realm of the database as being the issue."
"It isn't easy to compare the thousands of tables in the model against the database. The tool should improve the synchronization within the large organization"
"It would be helpful if they could create a generic JSON database type, as a target database, rather than a specific one like Mongo."
"The visual presentation is a little too colorful and seems that it is dumbed down."
"Tech support is a sticking point with me. I am really disappointed in the tech support. We pay for the Platinum level. It takes hours to get a response."
"Whenever there is a new version, there are a lot of release notes on the technical side of it, but I would like to be told why are we doing the upgrade... What I would like to really see is how this benefits us from the business point of view. What are the real benefits that the user gets? I want some kind of way white paper. The release notes describe the technical enhancements but, from the layman's point of view, if someone asks me what are the business benefits of this upgrade, I don't have any documentation to explain it to the business."
"The only thing I had an issue with was licensing, and the support was very good."
"When building the relationships there should be a little more flexibility."
"The screens are a bit outdated. They could use a new look and feel."
"When we decided to go with Foglight, a lot of people stopped using the diagnostics part because it was very intimidating... They still won't use it because they feel it's too intimidating. They will open something up and not know what to do. It's not very user-friendly. You have to click on a lot of stuff to find the information."
"The data model needs improvement when it comes to creating custom reports. That is an area where it needs a bit of improvement. Foglight gathers a lot of information around our databases as part of its monitoring. While I know all this information is in there, trying to pull the metric we want out for custom reports is sometimes hard to find. One nice thing about Foglight is that you can create custom dashboards, which you can easily convert to reports. We would be doing a lot more of that if it weren't for the challenging data model."
"The version that I'm using is not the latest version, so there might have been some improvement, but the OS monitoring is a bit lacking, and the high-availability option is a bit complicated to set up and it doesn't work all the time."
"The system is not that stable. We have been facing a lot of issues. We built a new store environment of Foglight, an environment for monitoring the Lowe's store servers, which are all Db2 servers. The objective is to monitor 800 Db2 servers in each Foglight instance. Up to 150 Db2 servers, the environment was working fine. The moment it crossed 150 or 160, we started having a lot of stability issues."
"I would like the rule development code to be made available so we don't always have to be referred to professional services for custom solutions. For example, if we want to exclude certain databases from a particular rule, we shouldn't have to go to support and to professional services for that solution. If the code and syntax were available, we have resources that could quickly turn something like that around."
"I get a lot of alerts that, while important, are not critical. Then I have to dig in and figure out how to turn alerts off, but not the logging. I want to be able to go back, once we get the other big issues out of the way, and start fine-tuning some of those other areas, but I don't necessarily want to receive an email for all of them."
"Foglight does have a component that allows you to look at things in real time, but it's not as friendly or as efficient in terms of responsiveness as Quest Spotlight is. Foglight might be lacking in this department."
"One thing that I would like, and it's probably something that I could set up internally, is something other than a dashboard which I have to look at to know that a server is down. I'd like bells and whistles to go off... If I look at the dashboard I know there's a server down. But if I'm not looking at it, if I'm looking at some other problem, I want to know about it. You can do that, you can use SMSs and alerts to your phone, and I could set it up to handle that, but it would be nice if, out-of-the-box, Foglight did that."
IDERA ER/Studio is ranked 13th in Database Development and Management with 33 reviews while Quest Foglight for Databases is ranked 2nd in Database Development and Management with 10 reviews. IDERA ER/Studio is rated 8.4, while Quest Foglight for Databases is rated 8.6. The top reviewer of IDERA ER/Studio writes "The solution has important reverse engineering features, but it needs a single sign-on feature". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Quest Foglight for Databases writes "Excels at displaying intensive database queries and enables me to address things before they become real problems". IDERA ER/Studio is most compared with erwin Data Modeler by Quest, Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect, SAP PowerDesigner, Toad Data Modeler and erwin Evolve by Quest, whereas Quest Foglight for Databases is most compared with Quest Spotlight, Oracle Enterprise Manager, SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer, IDERA SQL Diagnostic Manager for SQL Server and Redgate SQL Toolbelt. See our IDERA ER/Studio vs. Quest Foglight for Databases report.
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