Quest Software, Inc., maker of the Toad product suites, has broadened its support for Sybase Adaptive Server Enterprise (ASE) with the beta kick-off of Toad for Sybase, a new, integrated Sybase ASE management tool that improves Sybase ASE performance and boosts DBAs' productivity. The beta is currently available for download on Toad World, Quest's one-stop destination to read about Toad and learn new tips and tricks from top database experts. According to Quest, Toad for Sybase aims to give DBAs the most important functionality for Sybase database administration and development, carefully selected based on customer feedback.
Toad for Sybase will be released initially as a freeware product in March 2011, with a commercial release coming out later in the year in Q2, Joe Faherty, product manager, Quest Software, tells 5 Minute Briefing. Leading up to the beta release of the product, Faherty noted that Quest had meetings with some of its larger enterprise customers to ensure upfront that the customers got what they needed to fill the gap in the Sybase space and address their critical challenges.
Features in the beta include: an integrated SQL editor, schema browser, object navigation and management, data management, performance diagnostics, and the ability to manage users, roles. The product provides support for ASE 15.0.x to 15.5.
The "lion's share of the functionality" of the Toad for Sybase product will be provided in the freeware product, and the commercial product when it is released will provide higher-level bundles with some advanced functionality, says Faherty.
With support ranging from cloud databases and Teradata, to SQL Server, Oracle and DB2, the Toad product suite supports users working within a range of database environments and also provides extensions for application development tools such as Eclipse and Visual Studio. Customers want the ability to extend into other platforms, whether it is at the database layer, the application layer, or the hardware layer, says Faherty, emphasizing that they want "options and choices."
Toad product management and development team members recently presented a walk-through of Toad for Sybase. Quest will give away a 6th generation 8GB iPod Nano to the top tester at the end of the beta cycle based on the number of issues submitted and feedback given through beta discussion forum on ToadWorld.com.