Embarcadero Technologies has introduced DBArtisan XE, the newest addition to the DBArtisan family of heterogeneous database administration tools. With support for multiple database platforms "out of the box," DBArtisan XE enables database administrators (DBAs) to maximize the performance, availability and security of all major database management systems, including Oracle and MySQL, as well as SQL Server, IBM DB2, and Sybase from a single interface.
The thrust behind DBArtisan is two-fold, Jan Liband, vice president of marketing, Embarcadero, tells 5 Minute Briefing. "In a way, it is really us getting back to our roots in a way that would allow the product to be more competitive and to deliver more value to customers." The DBArtisan family, when it first came out years ago was multiplatform, Liband notes. Over time, although the product capabilities were there, users would buy it for just one database platform and would then elect to add on additional database platforms if needed it, bringing the cost up slightly with each database platform added on.
However, it is very common now, especially for database administrators (DBAs) at larger companies, to have to administer heterogeneous environments, observes Liband. "They have to support both Oracle as well as MySQL, maybe SQL Server, or DB2, Sybase, or any combination thereof, and so the pricing and packaging model that we had moved to was not the best fit, either cost-wise or technologically with what DBAs were facing," Liband explains. By getting back to its roots, with DBArtisan XE, all the latest database platforms are supported with one license, and, says Librand, "it still remains the only database administration tool out there that has deep native support for each of these supported platforms, all supported from a single interface."
Additionally, a second key feature of DBArtisan XE is the inclusion of the recently announced Embarcadero ToolCloud. DBArtisan XE is first Embarcadero product to include Embarcadero ToolCloud as a standard feature. ToolCloud provides centralized licensing and provisioning plus on-demand tool deployment to improve tool manageability for IT organizations with multiple users of DBArtisan. Embarcadero InstantOn, also included with DBArtisan XE, gives DBAs click-and-run access from anywhere on their network with zero-install requirements on their local machines.
For additional information about DB Artisan XE, go here and, for a brief video demo, go here.