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Embarcadero Technologies, Inc.
(415) 834-3131
www.embarcadero.com
Embarcadero DBArtisan
Embarcadero DBArtisan Delivers Intuitive, Cross-Platform Database Administration
REVIEWER: Jose Gomez, associate chief engineer/
database administrator
International.
for
MANUFACTURER
Wendy’s
to use Embarcadero’s products instead of
Control Center and Enterprise Manager.
WEAKNESSES: I would like the Migration Utility
BACKGROUND: Wendy’s International, Inc. is
one of the world’s largest restaurant operating
and franchising companies, with $8.3 billion
in 2001 system-wide sales, more than 8,200
restaurants and two quality brands – Wendy’s
and Tim Hortons. Wendy’s Old Fashioned
Hamburgers was founded in 1969 by Dave
Thomas and is the third-largest quick-service
hamburger chain in the world with 6,064
restaurants in the United States, Canada and
international markets. Tim Hortons was founded
in 1964 by Tim Horton and Ron Joyce and is
the largest coffee and fresh baked goods chain
in Canada. There are 2,042 Tim Hortons
restaurants in Canada and 143 in the U.S.
to have capability for larger data movements
in our 700-gigabyte data warehouse. For the
smaller development, QA and production
databases, it’s outstanding.
Embarcadero DBArtisan
Embarcadero Technologies, Inc.
425 Market Street, Suite 425
San Francisco, CA 94105
(415) 834-3131
www.embarcadero.com
PLATFORMS: Windows 2000 NT (for Microsoft
SQL Server), IBM AIX (for IBM DB2 UDB),
OS/390 (for IBM DB2).
PROBLEM SOLVED: The Wendy’s team of five
database administrators (DBAs) manages IBM
DB2 UDB (both on UNIX and OS/390),
Microsoft SQL Server and Oracle databases.
Not all team members have expertise in each
database platform or experience with the
UNIX command line. We needed a single interface to manage DB2, SQL Server and Oracle
databases from a Windows-based application.
We also wanted each of our DBAs to perform
and learn tasks which were outside of their
current skill set, especially with regard to the
command line. The functionality of
Embarcadero DBArtisan helped us solve a
wide variety of specific problems.
Migration Utility was also used to move a very
old 6.5 SQL Server implementation into 7.0
and eventually into 2000. Creating tables,
indexes, databases, nodes, etc. is incredibly
simple using DBArtisan. Its performance is
lightning fast compared with other tools
we’ve used, and the team found the interface
to be extremely intuitive. The Process
Monitor feature is excellent for identifying
active users, processes and terminating runaway transactions. The Process Monitor gives
us a picture of what’s going on in our databases at any given time. DBArtisan makes
managing tablespaces and identifying space
availability easy. It’s simple to discover when
I need to add raw devices or enlarge file systems for my tablespaces.
PRODUCT FUNCTIONALITY: DBArtisan’s Migration
Utility helped us move all database objects
from a development environment to QA to
production. Because some DBAs in our team
are not UNIX people, DBArtisan has flattened
the learning curve for the less experienced to
be productive in the UNIX environment. The
Reprinted from DM Review • July 2003
STRENGTHS: The ability to manage multiple
vendor database systems and DB2 on OS/390
is a great strength of DBArtisan. I had some
experience on the command line, but
Embarcadero helped me fill in the gaps and
become more productive. This persuaded me
SELECTION CRITERIA: We were looking for a
tool with a quick return on our investment. We
didn’t want to funnel through a lot of tasks to
get the job done. Wendy’s evaluated other
tools, but no other toolset showed us more
functionality in a limited trial period than
DBArtisan. As we started working with it, we
knew exactly what it was capable of doing.
When we initiated our warehousing project,
we conducted a trial of DBArtisan and used
the Migration Utility. I had tried Control Center
in the past, but it was not a very easy tool to
use. DBArtisan was extremely intuitive. We
were able to quickly configure and navigate
through the tool, giving us a good idea of its
capabilities.
DELIVERABLES: We use the HTML report generation to document the entire look of the
environment including all of the database
objects, storage information and permissions for publication to our internal Web
site. This allows developers to view the
information and have a better understanding
of the production systems.
VENDOR SUPPORT: We have seen many quality
enhancements in the last release of DBArtisan –
such as DBArtisan’s support for DB2 EEE. The
ability to see what my EEE system looks like and
the ability to generate my DDLs in the partitioned environment are very important so I can
migrate them over if I have a change.
DOCUMENTATION: When I’ve had the opportunity to use them, both tech support and the
documentation are helpful.
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