- Chapter 32: Finding Additional Compatible Solutions
- Administration Utilities
- Asset Management
- Data Collection and Barcodes
- Document Management and Workflow
- Electronic Commerce
- Implementation and Interface Tools
- Maintenance Management
- Planning and Supply Chain Management
- Printing and Output Enhancement
- Quality Management
- Reporting Enhancement and Business Intelligence
- Taxation
- Warehouse and Distribution Management
This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
Administration Utilities
The following sections describe the administration utilities available from third-party vendors.
AppWorx Corporation
Product Name: AppWorx Oracle Applications Extension
Product Category: System Management
Contact Name: Tim Donovan
Contact Phone: (425) 644-2121
Contact E-mail: tdonovan@appworx.com
Web Page: http://www.appworx.com
The AppWorx Oracle Applications Extension (OAE) is an Oracle-approved software solution that extends the capabilities of Concurrent Manager by providing job scheduling, workload balancing, and output management in the Oracle Applications environment. With AppWorx and OAE as their single point of control, Oracle Applications customers can manage their job streams as business processes, implementing multi-job and multi-instance dependencies and providing conditional logic to their processing. The product is designed for use by both end users and systems personnel.
AppWorx OAE has a full-featured output viewer to examine data online. It also provides enterprise-caliber output management; distributing data to remote printers, e-mail addresses, printer lists, or data files, as well as removing expired output. AppWorx OAE can be configured to send e-mail notifications of job status, issue alerts via pager, or run custom scripts based on job outcome. AppWorx OAE is tightly integrated with Oracle's Concurrent Manager and the Oracle database, and can run standard and nonstandard jobs alike, simplifying the automation of complex processing routines including FSG Generation, MRP planning, Mass Allocations, and G/L Importing and Posting.
OuterBay Technologies
Product Name: OuterBay Archiver for Oracle Applications
Product Category: Online archiving, Purge and Archive, Data Management
Contact Name: Bill Morrow, Vice President of Sales and Marketing
Contact Phone: (408) 557-6100
Contact E-mail: sales@outerbay.com
Web Page: http://www.outerbay.com
OuterBay is the creator of OuterBay Archiver, an Online-Archive solution that leverages standard Oracle Applications purge functions to intelligently deposit purged data into a single online archive database. By reducing the amount of data in production, Oracle Applications runs faster, 11i upgrades take less time, and system infrastructure costs are reduced.
Purging older data from OLTP will reduce the required system outage, so using the OuterBay Archiver should be considered a prestep when performing an Oracle 11i upgrade. The OuterBay Archiver removes the need to support legacy versions of the applications, because historical data is upgradeable and accessible through Oracle 11i. It also reduces the hardware upgrade costs historically required to ensure acceptable performance after an upgrade. Plus, it safeguards your corporate investment in Oracle Applications and user training by extending the standard Oracle functionality. OuterBay is a member of the Oracle Partner Program.
Precise Software Solutions, Inc.
Product Name: Precise/Interpoint
Product Category: Administration Utilities
Contact Phone: (781) 461-0700, toll-free (800) 310-4777
Contact FAX: (781) 461-0460
Contact E-mail: info@precise.com
Web Page: http://www.precise.com
Precise/Interpoint is a unique performance management solution for enterprise resource planning (ERP) applications. Tailored to Oracle Applications, Precise/Interpoint monitors your Oracle database as well as your ERP application to identify and track problematic SQL statements to their origins—ERP users, modules, transactions, programs, screens, reports, requests. Using the core technology of Precise/SQL, Precise/Interpoint gets to the root of your database performance problem, regardless of its cause: database parameters, the ERP application, user customizations, or extensions.
By optimizing the way ERP applications access your Oracle database, Precise/Interpoint maximizes the performances of your ERP applications and helps you meet your business needs.
Step-by-Step, Nonintrusive Performance Management
Precise/Interpoint provides meet an easy-to-use, comprehensive method that guides you through performance management from start to finish—from proactive monitoring and problem detection to problem analysis, resolution, and verification. Precise/Interpoint allows you to pinpoint the causes of your performance problems, model potential solutions to those problems, and analyze the impact of proposed changes before putting those changes into production.
ERP Performance Challenges Overcome
ERP applications meet automate complex business processes in which high performance and throughput are crucial. ERP vendors create their applications for average users, not specific users in unique business environments. User needs, usage patterns, customizations, system components and architectures, and platform environments vary from business to business, causing ERP application performance to vary widely. Tuning ERP applications to ensure that those applications work together efficiently and effectively in their unique environments is crucial if those applications and the businesses they help automate are to succeed.
Ideal for today's customizations and development, deployment, and production environments, Precise/Interpoint helps you manage ERP performance by automatically and proactively identifying and tracking resource-consuming SQL statements to their points of origin: ERP users, modules, transactions, programs, screens, reports, or requests. Precise/Interpoint also breaks down Oracle resources by ERP entity, allowing you to focus on and tune your largest Oracle resource consumers.
Pinpointing Performance Problems
ERP applications identify themselves to Oracle databases using one or several generic user IDs and program names. Because ERP identifiers do not individualize ERP users or transactions, it is impossible for most performance management tools to pinpoint the true sources of performance bottlenecks in ERP applications.
Tailored to Oracle Applications, Precise/Interpoint continuously monitors the Oracle database and ERP applications and correlates the resulting data to locate the cause of a performance problem, regardless of where that problem occurs—in the database, the core ERP application, the user customization or extension. Next, Precise/Interpoint drills down to pinpoint the resource-consuming SQL statements executed by the ERP application.
SQL Statement Improvement
Most ERP applications prevent you from changing the SQL statements they generate. Therefore, the only way to tune SQL statements is to tune the objects those statements access.
Precise/Interpoint displays all relevant indexes for an SQL statement to help you identify and choose the best one. If no relevant index exists, Precise/Interpoint helps you design a new one by displaying relevant table columns and their usage and effects on the problematic SQL statement.
Solving one performance problem may cause problems elsewhere in a system, however. Therefore, it is critical to simulate and verify changes before putting them into production. Precise/Interpoint lets you simulate the creation, deletion, or modification of an index in a production-safe environment to determine how that change would impact your environment.
By improving SQL statements, Precise/Interpoint helps you maximize the performances of your ERP applications according to your business's application configuration, system architecture, and database platform and version features.
Tailored to Oracle
Precise/Interpoint supports all versions of Oracle. Special modules handle the latest features and allow you to establish performance baselines and benchmark the performances of your ERP applications when you migrate your databases to newer versions of Oracle.
Quest Software
Product Name: SQL Impact
Product Category: System Administration, Data Conversion, and Implementation
Contact Name: Barry Lewis
Contact Phone: (949) 754-8000
Contact E-mail: blewis@quest.com
Web Page: http://www.quest.com/sql_impact/
SQL Impact allows changes to be made to a database with proper impact analysis. This software provides documentation and auditing capabilities to manage the interdependencies between the application source code and all database objects. Developers use SQL Impact to identify that all programs impacted are verified. SQL Impacts' impact analysis process determines precisely which components of an application are affected by structural changes to the database.
SQL Impact drills down to the individual lines of source code affected. SQL Impact can initiate an editing session to perform and test the required changes. This software provides important application documentation on how each application uses the database and the interdependencies between application objects. By automating the tedious and error-prone task of impact analysis, SQL Impact enhances the productivity of DBAs and developers while improving the overall reliability of the system.
Product Name: I/Watch
Product Category: System Administration Utility
Contact Name: Dax French
Contact Phone: (949) 754-8000
Contact E-mail: Dax.French@quest.com
Web Page: http://www.quest.com/i_watch/
I/Watch monitors both the database and operating system. It runs unattended and alerts the DBA or system administrator of impending problems. When notification of the problem is received, I/Watch takes the DBA through the necessary steps to respond from pinpointing the problem all the way to its final resolution. I/Watch provides sophisticated historical replay and analysis capabilities to identify the causes of the problem.
I/Watch can be configured to provide early notification, should the same conditions recur. If practical, I/Watch can even be programmed to take automatic corrective action, thus minimizing the chances of the problem reoccurring. Other features include a capacity to help tune the environment for optimal performance, recommendations for configuration changes, and identification of bottlenecks.
Product Name: SQLab Vision
Product Category: System Administration Utility
Contact Name: Vickie Cohen
Contact Phone: (949) 754-8000
Contact E-mail: Vickie.cohen@quest.com
Web Page: http://www.quest.com/sqlab_vision/
SQLab Vision is the new generation of application tuning. Combining a powerful Oracle tuning environment with nonintrusive collection technology, impact analysis capabilities, and expert tuning advice, SQLab Vision evolves SQLab Xpert into the most advanced tuning solution available
SQLab Vision features Quest's new StealthCollect technology to collect SQL statements and performance indicators from Oracle databases and host operating systems at subsecond intervals. SQLab Vision collects data nonintrusively, with no added overhead on the target database and minimal overhead on the host system. StealthCollect runs 24/7, enabling you to identify and resolve problems in the past and collect performance information automatically, requiring no management time or active maintenance.
Product Name: SQL Navigator
Product Category: System Administration Utility
Contact Name: John Theis
Contact Phone: (949) 754-8000
Contact E-mail: john.theis@quest.com
Web Page: http://www.quest.com/sql_navigator-portal/
The SQL Navigator family is a complete development environment for Oracle PL/SQL and SQL server-side development and management. It provides an integrated environment for development and testing of stored procedures, schemas, SQL scripts, and more, all from an easy-to-use graphical user interface. This solution suite was conceived, designed, and developed by Oracle developers and DBAs who have hands-on experience with the most typical problems faced by Oracle developers. SQL Navigator has set new standards in the complex process of developing, testing, and managing applications that interface with Oracle databases.
SQL Navigator's user-friendly design is helping Oracle development and administration teams achieve unprecedented productivity gains worldwide.
The SQL Navigator family also includes optional modules for PL/SQL debugging, SQL tuning with Xpert advice, integrated version control with InterSolv PVCS and Microsoft SourceSafe, integrated impact analysis, and Oracle Web development.
Product Name: Schema Manager
Product Category: System Administration Utility, Implementation Tools
Contact Name: Hassan Fahimi
Contact Phone: (949) 754-8000
Contact E-mail: hassan.fahimi@quest.com
Web Page: http://www.quests.com/
Schema Manager provides a comprehensive repository that supports all object types and dependencies. Simple drag-and-drop capabilities enable a DBA to quickly populate the repository from an existing database environment, creating a baseline version. Using the baseline version, Schema Manager can support schema changes in both development and production modes.
During development, frequent schema changes can be made directly to the development database. In contrast, in production mode schema changes must be carefully orchestrated. Schema Manager calculates the "delta" and captures all the changes made during development and then automatically generates the corresponding upgrade script to apply the changes to the target database. With pre-audit and post-audit features, if the deployment is unsuccessful, a rollback script is provided to undo all changes without loss of user data.
Product Name: SharePlex for Oracle
Product Category: Enhanced Reporting, System Administration, and e-Commerce
Contact Name: Melanie Kacerek
Contact Phone: (949) 754-8000
Contact E-mail: mkacerek@quests.com
Web Page: http://www.quests.com
SharePlex for Oracle is a high-speed, log-based replication software solution that continuously replicates changes from a production instance to multiple, fully accessible "target" Oracle instances. The target instances can be used daily for reports and queries, and as needed for high availability and disaster recovery (planned and unplanned outages of the production system). Offloading the reports improves the general performance for an OLTP environment. Relocating ad hoc queries eliminates spikes in OLTP performance. Target instances can be local or remote because SharePlex for Oracle supports both LAN and WAN environments. Consequently, you can use SharePlex for Oracle to get the data to the users, wherever they might be.
SharePlex for Oracle is designed to handle business volumes of data—thousands of transactions per second for thousands of tables without the overhead costs associated with trigger-based solutions. By monitoring the redo logs, replicating the changes via memory as much as possible, and using a continuous, high-speed network protocol over TCP/IP (not SQL*Net), SharePlex for Oracle is able to replicate quickly with a very small footprint on the source system, source instance, and the network. Its comprehensive and flexible nature enables SharePlex to replicate complete ERP applications because it replicates long columns and sequences in addition to tables. SharePlex for Oracle provides continually updated and accessible targets that offer options for reporting, high availability, and disaster recovery, without the drawbacks of trigger-based solutions.
Product Name: Space Manager
Product Category: System Administration Utility
Contact Name: Hassan Fahimi
Contact Phone: (949) 754-8000
Contact E-mail: Hassan.Fahimi@quest.com
Web Page: http://www.quest.com/space_manager/
Space Manager provides a comprehensive solution for space management and reorganization. This software offers preventative maintenance, problem detection and resolution, and capacity planning across any number of databases. In correct object sizing and reorganization, Space Manager can provide both defragmentation and relocation, features designed to improve access times and have minimal impact on application availability.
Space Manager's capacity-planning feature can prevent problems such as running out of space by predicting the future size of individual objects, groups of objects, or even the entire database. The software automates the space management process, thus increasing DBA productivity and significantly enhancing the performance and overall quality of the Oracle database environment.
Product Name: SQLab Xpert
Product Category: System Administration Utility
Contact Name: Azeem Mohammed
Contact Phone: (949) 754-8000
Contact E-mail: azeem.mohammed@quest.com
Web Page: http://www.quests.com/
SQLab Xpert provides context-sensitive tuning advice for SQL statements based on the Oracle execution plan and the database structure. The software identifies offensive SQL statements, provides EXPLAIN information, tunes the SQL and the Indexing scheme, and as a result resolves I/O bottlenecks.
When the offensive SQL statements have been identified, SQLab Xpert provides fast, intelligent advice on how to improve response time, substantially improving productivity. With a click of a button, SQLab Xpert can then rewrite SQL statements to implement the advice that is selected. This software provides for a comparison of several possible tuning scenarios simultaneously across multiple databases and enables the user to select the solution that provides the best results.
Product Name: TOAD
Product Category: System Administration Utility
Contact Name: John Theis
Contact Phone: (949) 754-8000
Contact E-mail: john.theis@quest.com
Web Page: http://www.quest.com/toad/
TOAD is a lightweight, powerful tool built around an advanced PL/SQL editor. Object browsers give users quick access to database objects. Hotkeys, auto-correct, and type-ahead features make PL/SQL editing and testing fast and effortless. Registered users get Web access to bug fixes and enhancements. Licensed TOAD users get bug fixes, regular enhancements, and new features, such as Oracle9 and 9i object support and more.
TOAD users also benefit from e-mail access to Quest Software Technical Support Staff.