The Rise of Cross-Platform Database Administration

by Mar 27, 2020

Time and money are two things that are always in short supply. Let’s face facts. It’s a rare individual who turns down some extra cash or a few free minutes or hours to devote to something that interests them. If you fall into that category and have no need for those additional funds you just received or have some vacation time you can’t use, please contact me directly. I think I can take it off your hands.

In the business world, time and money are often inextricably intertwined. Corporate leaders are never amused by wasted money or procedures that take longer than anticipated to perform. Inappropriate or reckless spending can usually be identified with some basic investigative tactics. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to determine when an enterprise is being vastly overcharged for an item that competitors can get at a lower cost. A few tweaks to the supply chain may be all that’s needed to alleviate this problem rather quickly.

The costs related to lost productivity can be much more difficult to quantify. When a database team is underperforming, it can be for a variety of reasons. It may be that the wrong personnel were given the responsibility of caring for an organization’s database resources. Perhaps the team is overwhelmed by the amount of work that short-sighted management has put on a limited number of first-class database administrators. Or maybe the database environment has become so complex that it has simply outgrown previously sufficient tools and strategies.

The Rise of Cross-Platform Database Administration

Anyone who has been in the IT field for a few years knows that it is constantly evolving. New solutions are introduced to handle the seemingly endless increase in the amount of information that new streams such as big data make available to enterprises. While these changes affect all areas of an organization’s computing environment, one group particularly impacted is the database team of developers and administrators.

There are three major challenges that modern database teams face.

  • Multiple-platform environments have become the norm as enterprises cope with the variety of data sources and their uses. Database teams are expected to support more than one database platform and are tasked with maintaining a greater number of instances. The days of specializing in a single database solution are long gone, with administrators moving from MySQL to Oracle and then SQL Server systems in the space of a few minutes. This vastly complicates daily work activities.

  • An emphasis on applications that rely on underlying database instances has increased the focus put on database teams. Keeping the database applications running that enterprises rely on is critically important and DBAs are more in the spotlight than ever before.

  • The migration of database instances to the cloud has further complicated the job of developers and administrators. They need to adopt different support methods to handle cloud databases and in many cases hybrid environments that include on-premises systems.

These issues can have a major impact on the productivity of database teams. Providing them with the right tools can help minimize those problems.

A Tool to Help Multi-Platform Database Environments

Aqua Data Studio is a tool for database developers and administrators that helps them deal with multi-platform environments. It enables teams to manage over 30 relational and NoSQL database platforms. Some of the supported solutions include MySQL, SQL Server, Oracle, MongoDB, and Db2. The tool lets your team access data sources, manage database objects, administer and synchronize databases. Analyzing and creating informative visualizations are other features that Aqua Data Studio offers database professionals.

Using a single tool to connect and manage all of the multi-platform databases in a typical environment can provide significant financial savings and increase productivity. Consolidating with one tool instead of individual solutions for each platform makes sense from an economic point of view. Why buy extra software for your team if one solution is all you need? Productivity is enhanced by reduced training time and eliminating the time wasted in switching between different tools. Adopting Aqua Data Studio is a win-win for database teams and IT management.

An illustrative case study describing the benefits enjoyed by one organization is available at the IDERA website. If you’re on the fence regarding the benefits that Aqua Data Studio can provide to your organization, it’s definitely worth reading. Your database team will appreciate it.