How Idera Saved my Tail Feathers Contest

by Jul 11, 2015

  • #2669

    Avatar of SandiW
    SandiW

    Keymaster

    Have Idera products saved your tail in times of crisis?

    If so, we want to hear from you! Let us know how Idera has helped you in times of need and you could win 1 OF 2 Full Conference passes to PASS Summit 2015. Sweet deal, right?

    How to enter:

    1) Let us know what Idera product(s) you are using and how they make your life easier by starting a thread. Not a community member? You can create an account on the right-hand side.
    2) Contest runs until August 31, 2015. At the end of the contest period, 2 winners will be chosen at random to receive full conference passes to PASS Summit 2015 where you will attend as Idera advocates.
    3) Winners will be asked to stand alongside our product experts at the conference in our booth and share their Idera story.

    Interested? Get quackin!


    ? Sandi Warren

    Idera Staff / Director, Product Marketing

    #2795

    Avatar of Jeff Taylor
    Jeff Taylor

    Participant

    I currently use Idera SQL Diagnostic Manager, Elements and SQL Admin Toolkit.

    SQL DM has made life extremely easy to identify heavy loads, eliminate the ‘blame game’ in relation to the database servers and help pin point performance issues quickly. With the company I am currently working for the first thing I did was setup and configure SQL DM to monitor the SQL Production Environment. This environment was rumored to have performance issues but no one was able to pin-point the cause. Within the first few minutes of installing SQL DM I was able to identify and provide details of those issues to management. In another instance I was able to identify what process was blocking and instead of doing something drastic with our supported application, we were able to pin point and fix the exact issue which then had no impact on the rest of our application.

    SQL Elements is a great tool for finding and identifying and providing information for all of the SQL servers on our network.

    SQL Admin Toolkit has helped me countless times in server migrations of SQL logins, SQL jobs, Checking space, Server Statistics and others.

    Working with the Idera Support Team I have had the chance to request new features which have been implemented and find bugs, which have been fixed and patches applied. The team has been great and responsive to all of our needs.

    Being a SQL DBA I cannot live without tools like these, they save tremendous time and allow me to focus on the important things.

    #2800

    Avatar of Holly Fullingim
    Holly Fullingim

    Participant

    I am really new to the SQL world and naively I started down the path of converting an Access database program which I wrote 15 years ago to SQL. That part was easy enough. I did in over a weekend shortly after the first of this year and everything went smoothly. I got my customer all excited about the wonderful things I was going to do for them when I converted their software to a new platform and oh how easily I was going to be able to make modifications now and on and on and on until they were ecstatic.

    After I converted the production program to use the SQL database I started noticing there were some subtle differences in the datatypes that I had to address, date fields, strings, nothing big. I worked over a weekend and used a backup copy of the customer’s database and then just uploaded the modified DB back to them. Simple.

    Then I started rewriting my application in a .NET platform. Everything was fine until I started making some schema changes and suddenly realized that I wasn’t going to be able to just pull their DB over on a weekend and make the changes by hand and put it back. Timing was an issue, changes were complicated and I didn’t trust myself to do it all correctly by hand. I also hadn’t kept really good notes of what I had done and so it was going to be really challenging to get it all done right. I was in a mess.

    I started looking for a solution and found the Database Compare tool available with Visual Studio PREMIUM but I only had the Professional version (which didn’t include that feature) and I just wasn’t going to spend the money to upgrade. I kept looking and found R1Soft Schema Compare tool. It sounded too good to be true. I was skeptical. I downloaded a trial. It seemed to work. I got a call from a sales rep named Danny and was even more nervous since I didn’t know him and figured he was probably just telling me what I wanted to hear in order get my money. But, I was really desperate. I couldn’t find anything else that even seemed reasonable to try. Danny spent a lot of time with me and had an engineer give me a demo of the SQL Backup product that right now is way beyond what I need but I was so impressed with the knowledge of the engineer and his patience with my really stupid questions and I learned a whole lot about SQL just from the demo.
    In the end I purchased the SQL Admin Toolset and got the SQL Comparison Toolset, SQL Doctor and SQL Virtual Database all bundled together in a promotion that was in effect for what to me seemed like a fantastic price. Danny called me a few days later to see how it was going (that is really going the extra mile in customer service) and I was so excited to let him know that using JUST the Schema Compare tool I was able to confidently make all the schema changes I needed to do in under 15 minutes and that included figuring out how to use the software. In fact, I was so stunned at how fast it went I did it over a second time because I was certain that I had made a mistake somewhere because it was JUST TOO EASY!!! I know that this one tool saved me several hours of hand changes and untold amounts of stress. I was also able to generate the scripts necessary to perform the schema changes on the production server when I was finished with testing.

    But wait, it gets even better. While I was working on my new program I suddenly got this message that several of my tables were not available for use as they contained UNSUPPORTED FIELD NAMES!!!! OMG, what is this and how am I going to fix it? And I don’t mean just a dozen or so field names, I mean a couple HUNDRED field names. But this time I didn’t panic. I already knew that I had the exact tool in my back pocket that I needed to get this job done. Not only are the schema changes easily doable but I discovered the Data Compare tool as well and with that I am able to keep my test DB in sync with the production DB easily and whenever I want. If every tool that is included with what I purchased is even half as effective and useful AND educational to a novice SQL user like myself, I found a goldmine. Well done Idera Team! You saved my tail feathers, got me out of the frying pan and now I am sitting pretty.