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Solutions for the Information Project Team www.dbta.com Volume 16, Number 2 • February 2002

Enterprise Support Multiple DBMS SolutionsBy Diane Beeler

Many companies merge or acquire

other companies. This requires a blend-

ing of two or more disparate systems.

Perhaps one is an Oracle shop and the

other a DB2 UDB shop, so now you

have to support two database platforms.

One uses Windows NT servers and the

other uses AIX and Solaris servers with

different versions of each of those oper-

ating systems. Since you now have

Oracle and UDB and PeopleSoft now

supports UDB, you add the PeopleSoft

application. You upgrade to Oracle 9i,

  but not all of your applications are 9i-

tolerant, so you still have to support 8.x.

 Now you are supporting multiple data-

 bases, multiple operating systems, mul-

tiple applications and multiple versions

of software. Life becomes more com-

  plex. Your DBAs who knew Oracle

don't know UDB. They also don't know

the PeopleSoft application and they still

need to become familiar with Oracle 9i.  Now the experts you hired are scram-

  bling to manage unfamiliar databases

and tools. Add in another acquired 

company that has Microsoft SQL

Server, yet another operating system

and additional new applications and 

you can see how this snowballs in com-

 plexity and unmanageability.

The easy answer seems to be to con-

vert the acquired systems to what you

already have, but the size and complex-

ity of most enterprise databases make

this too costly and problematic.

According to a recent IDC database

report: "…although IT managers would 

like to consolidate the number of differ-

ent database products in their shops,

they have not seen much progress in

this direction. The myriad of mergers

and acquisitions and the consolidation

of departmental systems have served to

keep the average number of different

database products steady in the five-to-

seven range for a number of years."

This claim is supported in the data

that BMC Software collects when users

register to download their distributed 

database tools. The data below is col-

lected from several thousand down-

loads of Web DBA™, a web-based 

data-base management tool. The per-

centages add up to greater than 100 per-

cent, because

many users have

more than one

database plat-

form, more than

one type of serv-

er and more than

one type of 

UNIX operating

system.

There is a new

wave of applica-

tions that repre-sent a shift in IT spending from ERP

  back-end to customer-facing front-end 

applications. SQL Server packaged 

applications (in human resources,

inventory management, etc.) are

 becoming more prevalent, for example.

IT planners now look for consistency

in applications rather than consistency

in database platforms.

Given that what users of IT systems

really care about is whether they can

run the applications they want on multi-

 ple database platforms, IT managers are

faced with finding tools that allow

often inexperienced DBAs to manage

these diverse and complex environ-

ments. Of users downloading Web

DBA, 49 percent are DBAs. Of those

55.8 percent have less than 5 years

experience.

In the June 2001 DBA Tools and

Utilities Forecast and Analysis report

IDC confirmed this skills shortage

among IT workers and said that this

contributed to the need for easy to use,

functionally rich tools in the distributed

tools market. They also said that the

distributed tools market will grow 11

 percent from 2000 through 2005 while

large systems tools will only grow at a

rate of 4 percent during the same

 period.

In the same report, IDC listed these

drivers in the distributed tools market:

Growth of databases

DBA skills shortage

Demand for high quality, scalable

applications

Emergence of e-business applications

Demand for Web-based applications

Demand for cross-platform support

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100%

50%

0%

Percent of customers downloading Web DBA who have these servers

Windows NT

or 2000

UNIX (AIX, HP UX,

Solaris, Linux

86.2%63.8%

11.5%

12.8%

31.5%

44.2%

Number of Years of Experience of DBAs Downloading Web DBA

DBAs with 0-1 years

DBAs with 1-2 years

DBAs with 2-5 years

DBAs with >5 years

continued

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Consider these examples. A large oil

and gas company recently acquired sev-

eral large companies and is merging the

information systems of each of these

companies. They have legacy systems

to maintain and must consolidate sys-

tems that are on multiple database plat-

forms, multiple releases of software,

multiple releases of tools and multiple

hardware platforms. Keeping track of all of this is a big challenge and so is

 backup and recovery. The average DBA

has experience with 2 to 3 platforms.

What criteria do they use in choosing

tools to manage all of this? They look 

for tools that can be used by the most

  people and tools that go across plat-

forms. They are using PATROL and 

SQL-BackTrack. The PATROL avail-

ability products provide an open, flexi-

  ble solution to challenging administra-

tive requirements of distributed 

computing environments. PATROLenhances the contribution and value of 

your database administration group by

automating critical but routine adminis-

trative functions and spotlighting the

information necessary to make faster,

  better decisions. PATROL is available

for Oracle, Microsoft SQL Server, DB2

Universal Database, Sybase and 

Informix.

SQL-BackTrack is an intelligent,

high-performance backup and recovery

  product that simplifies and automates

many database administration tasks

associated with backup and recovery. It

speeds up the recovery process and frees up time for DBAs and this increas-

es productivity on day-to-day tasks.

SQL-BackTrack is available for Oracle,

Microsoft SQL Server, Sybase and 

Informix.

Here is another case study. A large

 public utility has the opposite problem.

It is splitting into two companies - one

regulated and the other deregulated.

The new deregulated company is start-

ing nearly from the ground up on their 

database. The problems it faces are

inherited legacy systems in production,the need to standardize as much as pos-

sible on tools more than platforms and 

figuring out what tools to use. They

have very large systems to backup and 

recover and need tools that provide

maximum availability, performance and

scalability. They have chosen SQL-

Backtrack and PATROL Recovery

PATROL Recovery for Oracle is an

advanced backup and recovery solution

that delivers rapid database recovery

through right-sizing, or performing

the smallest, most efficient recovery

 possible.

What other tools could these compa-nies use to manage their heterogeneous

environments? PATROL Knowledge

Module for monitoring heterogeneous

enterprise databases, SQL-Programmer

for development across heterogeneous

  platforms, Web DBA for web-base

database management and PATROL

DB-Change Manager for schema

management.

In conclusion, diversity is not going

away. It is the world we live in and we

can take advantage of it and manage it

with the right tools for distributedenvironments.

  Diane Beeler is in Prod

  Management and Marketing at BMC

Software. http://www.bmc.com

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