Embarcadero Technologies DBArtisan 5.01

by John Churchill
April 13th, 1999

DBArtisan has for some time now been the preferred database front end for administrators and developers working with Oracle, SQL Server and Sybase relational database systems. Anyone who has used it in their work will tell tales of how it reduced the amount of work for a complicated migration to a trivial level, how it made administering a jungle of servers a simple task, and how one of its obscure features turned an impossible task into an everyday process. DBArtisan is truly the Excel of the database administration world, and now it's even scriptable through an exposed object model.

I tested version 5.01 of DBArtisan, released just a couple of weeks after 5.0 due to some hush-hush quality problems. The tool is customized with DLLs for one of four different brands of RDBMSs: Oracle, SQL Server, Sybase, and with this version, IBM's DB2 Universal DataBase Server. If you want to run the tool against more than one brand, you must purchase a license for each.

The Ultimate Administration Tool

DBArtisan was designed to replace the bland, feature-light admin tools that normally come with a RDMBS, as well as the toolchest of scripts that most experienced DBAs, especially consultants, cart around with them from one assignment to another. Many of these things are obvious from the moment you first start using the product. For example, DBArtisan makes it easy to construct a series of SQL code in its color-coded editor, step through it line by line and run it against several target databases simultaneously. The result set of any query is presented neatly in an adjustable column and can be copied and pasted right into Excel.

Effortless Object Moving

While this user interface candy makes DBArtisan a breeze to use, the real power lies in the powerful migration, reporting, searching and scripting features. Moving tables and schemas from one database to another is a breeze, and the product will let you preview the code before it actually gets executed. You can actually pick a piece of text from an application and, not knowing which server is holding it, let DBArtisan search every database until it can find it in a field. If this isn't enough, the program even exposes a set of OLE objects so that its parts can be scripted from any other VBA application.

Perhaps the greatest feature that alone makes the purchase price manageable is the ability to move an entire database from one server to another, even if the servers are running different brands of databases. DBArtisan will let the user select which objects to migrate, then copy them over piece by piece until the entire server is reconstructed, schemas, indexes, users, data and all. To be sure, there are a number of situations where the product fails, particularly when permissions are intertwined and they can't be reconstructed in the same order they are being read. DBArtisan also has some show-stopping problems with DB2 that need to be worked out, but this was not surprising considering how IBM has changed the product over time. As with any database administration tool, it is best used by an expert so that they can smooth out the bumps when they occur.

All this praise does not mean there are no flaws to this software. The screen is very cluttered and is nowhere near as customizable as a Microsoft Office application. With toolbars and tabs all over the top and bottom of the screen, opening an ISQL window means having only about ten lines to look at on an 800x600 screen. Embarcadero made up for this by placing a "full screen" button on the top bar, which gives the user access to 30 lines. The ability to select any font on the system would have made this even more bearable, but unfortunately the user is only allowed to select from four bulky ones. The reporting features, while a nice addition, are barely customizable and I personally did not find them adequate for my documentation needs.

I also did not find a few features I was hoping for in this release. For example, a graphical query building tool like that found in Powersoft's PowerBuilder would have been a greatly welcome addition. Also, the ability to take a sampling of a table's contents would also help to diagnose problems, a feature that comes with IBM's much less capable UDB administrator. Understandably, Embarcadero must draw the line on features that are already implemented in some of their other products such as Rapid SQL and ERStudio to prevent cannibalizing sales of those products. Still, even with all three installed I would have preferred they operated all in the same application space instead of having to switch between them.

Even with database vendors packing more features into their stock administration tools, DBArtisan takes the cake when it comes to making even an intermediate-level DBA operate like a real expert. No one who does this for a living should be without this extremely valuable software.

Platforms supported: Oracle 7.x & 8.x, Sybase System 10.x & 11.x, Microsoft SQL Server 6.0, 6.5 & 7.0, IBM DB2 Universal Database 5.x

Pricing: $995 per user per database platform

Embarcadero Technologies, Inc.
400 Montgomery Street, Suite 300
San Francisco, CA 94104 U.S.A.
(415) 834-3131
www.embarcadero.com