(The following is an excerpt from The Foxhound 3 Database Monitor white paper.)
A database monitor is a computer program that measures the activity of a database management system and displays those measurements in a meaningful way so you can see everything's OK... or quickly learn about problems and threats to performance and availability.
Foxhound 3 is a third-party database monitor for SAP® SQL Anywhere®. Here's how it works:
- Every 10 seconds Foxhound retrieves performance statistics from your database.
- Foxhound then
- stores these statistics in its own SQL Anywhere 16 database,
- performs summarization and other value-added calculations, and
- displays the results via HTML using SQL Anywhere's built-in HTTP server.
- stores these statistics in its own SQL Anywhere 16 database,
Figure 1. The Foxhound Monitor Page Showing An Idle Server With One Blocked Connection
Table 1 compares Foxhound Version 3 with four alternative products:
- the SQL Anywhere Monitor that is available with the SQL Anywhere 16 Standard and Advanced Editions,
- the Sybase Central Performance Monitor that comes with every edition of SQL Anywhere 16,
- the DBConsole utility that also comes with every edition of SQL Anywhere 16 and
- the Windows 7 Performance Monitor.
| SQL Anywhere Monitor 16 | Sybase Central Performance Monitor 16 | DBConsole Utility 16 | Windows 7 Performance Monitor | Foxhound 3 | |
| Primary purpose | Health and availability monitor | Performance monitor | Connection monitor | Performance monitor | Health, availability and performance monitor |
| Setup required | A lot | Everything | Some | Everything | Very little |
| Collection interval | 30 sec default, 10 sec minimum | 1 sec fixed | 4 sec default, 1 sec minimum | 1 sec default, 1 sec minimum | 10 sec fixed |
| Presentation | Graphs, Text | Graphs | Text | Graphs | Text |
| Implementation | Adobe Flash | Java | Native Windows | Native Windows | HTML |
| Historical data | Yes | - | - | - | Yes |
| Adhoc reporting | - | - | - | - | Yes |
| SQL Anywhere statistics | Some, variable | All, variable | All, variable | All, variable | Some, fixed |
| Latency measured | - | - | - | - | Yes |
| Peaks recorded | - | - | - | - | Yes |
| Database Alerts | 9 point-in-time events | - | - | - | 32 conditions |
| Alert "All Clear" | - | - | - | - | Yes |
| Drop connection | manual | - | manual | - | AutoDrop |
| Target databases supported | 11, 12, 16, On Demand 1.0 | 11, 12, 16, On Demand 1.0 | 11, 12, 16, On Demand 1.0 | 5.5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 16, On Demand 1.0 | 5.5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 16, On Demand 1.0 |
| Target hosts supported | local, network | local, network | local, network | local | local, network |
| MobiLink and Relay Server support | Yes | - | - | - | - |
| What's good? | Pretty | Free | Free | Free | Businesslike |
| What else? | Confusing | Hideous | Basic | Hideous | Crowded |
Primary purpose: The SQL Anywhere Monitor omits the phrase "performance monitor" from the docs as does DBConsole.
Setup required: Both DBConsole and Foxhound let you "connect and go" to see something useful while the others require varying degrees of effort just to get started.
Collection interval: Only one Foxhound customer has ever asked for "faster", nobody wants "slower".
Presentation: Nobody's ever asked for graphs so they remain a low-priority item for Foxhound.
Implementation: How a product was built can explain a lot about how it looks and feels and works.
Historical data: This sets the SQL Anywhere Monitor and Foxhound far, far apart from the others.
Adhoc reporting: This is about historical data, not retrieving current statistics from SQL Anywhere or Windows.
SQL Anywhere statistics: Like the collection interval, Foxhound's choice of which statistics to display is fixed.
Latency measured: Response time isn't one of the statistics provided by SQL Anywhere.
Peaks recorded: Peak values are displayed as hypertext links into Foxhound's historical data.
Database Alerts: Events happen once, conditions go into and out of effect.
Alert "All Clear": It's important to know when an Alert condition is no longer in effect.
Drop connection: Runaway connections are a big deal in some shops... not all, but some.
Target databases supported: Foxhound support for Version 5.5 databases will disappear someday, but not yet.
Target hosts supported: The Windows 7 Performance Monitor reports on the computer it's running on.
MobiLink and Relay Server support: The SQL Anywhere Monitor is the only game in town for this.
What's good? "If you had to use a single word to describe what you like about..."
What else? "Give me another word, this time describing what you don't like about..."
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