asked
redgate Developer Bundle verses Idera SQL toolbox
My boss has asked me to research some basic good tools for our DBAs/Developers. I personally would highly benefit from SQL Compare, SQL Data Compare, SQL Source Control, and SQL Prompt so that tool kit seems best for me. A coworker brought up the Idera toolbox set of tools and said they are good as well and have a compare tool. I have never worked with them other than the demo of SQL Doctor. Instead of me downloading their trial and spending hours trying them out I figured I would ask you all which set of tools is better in your opinion. Ideara comes with "25" tools but most of their tools don't seem to do more than things I can get from running a few dmv's. It includes SQL Doctor which is a neat tool, and a backup compression tool but I am sure that is licensed per server so putting it on my workstation won't be of much help. Now the SQL Virtual Database is awesome. Redgate has SQL Virtual Restore but it is not included in their Dev Bundle. Redgate Developer Bundle comes with SQL Compare, Data Compare, SQL Prompt Pro, SQL Data Generator (nice), SQL packager, SQL refractor, SQL Dependancy Tracker, SQL Doc, SQL Multi Script, and SQL Source Control. I still feel for my daily usage the Redgate toolkit will come in handy more for what I need but I want to hear from you all who have been using these tools. Which is better and why?
@TRAD - One thing I would say with the 'tool .v. DMVs' thing - Go an give my data space analyzer tool a spin. That just does DMV graphing - but it's all through an interactive chart - so you start at the server level, click on a db, click on a filegroup, click on tables, click on indexes - etc. Out of everyone that has replied to the emails I send saying 'how did you find it' - about 95% have said that they noticed something they weren't necessarily looking for, just because of the graphical nature of it. Not really plugging here - just saying that if something is visualised, it can present information a lot better...
@TRAD - have you noted that in the intervening time since this question was asked that the Atlantis Interactive tools are now free? Matt has incredibly generously handed over the whole toolset to the community. I'd say go and get a copy of all of them for the team members that might not have benefited from you recent purchase. Congrats on the RedGate purchase, they are an awesome company to partner with.
@TRAD - I am not certain about the individual products in the packages you mention but are you comparing like for like ? RedGate do a SQL Toolbelt package that has more products and may match the Idera package. There are also some free products that overlap the packages - RedGate SQL Search for one. Good luck
@TRAD - Just FYI.. We are using Red Gate DBA Bundle and that bundle come with SQL Virtual Restore. However, that is not working properly at the moment with current version. You won't get any problem if you are trying to restore < 10BG of DB but you will get 'Time Out' error all the time when you tried to restore > 10GB database. I am not sure they fix that in version 2.1.
I'll shy away from the "which is better" part since these tools have significant overlap in functionality and features. I will say that I've used many of the [Red-Gate][1] tools on a daily basis for years and find them both easy and intuitive to use -- probably just through long use -- and they are the standard against which I compare other products. The efficiency benefits during the trial period literally paid for the tools before they were purchased. With that being said, I've also used some of the equivalent [Idera][2] tools recently and found them to have the same general functionality that I've come to expect from the Red-Gate tools, just wrapped up in a different user experience. To mention another option (I'm willing to plug the tools I enjoy using), I just happened to be using the [Atlantis][3] compare tool when I read the question, and I might suggest them as a viable third alternative for a SQL tool set. They have a great price on an individual license. What are some of the areas where you hope to gain efficiencies? As a developer, the biggest benefits I get are from a compare tool, a search tool, a syntax completion tool, and a source control tool. Each of these tool vendors provide nice tools, and one can't go far wrong with any of them. You mentioned that you want to avoid downloading trials, but the main difference between the tool sets seems to be the layout and workflow imposed by each and those are too subjective to evaluate via recommendation alone. I would suggest that you and another DBA/Developer download a trial of each and walk through some of the scenarios where you expect a tool to give you and your developers the biggest gains. It will be a morning or afternoon well spent. A couple other similar tools I've used or heard of over the years: [Quest SQL Tools][4] [Embarcadero SQL Tools][5] [Apex SQL Tools][6] [1]:
http://www.red-gate.com/products/sql_professional_toolbelt/index.htm [2]:
http://www.idera.com/Content/Home.aspx [3]:
http://www.atlantis-interactive.co.uk/ [4]:
http://www.quest.com/sql-server/ [5]:
http://www.embarcadero.com/solutions/embarcadero-solutions-for-microsoft-sql-server [6]:
http://www.apexsql.com/
in the interest of fairness I think we should also mention the ApexSQL tools too
One thing I will say in all seriousness though, is be aware that not all toolsets are mapped the same way... So, for example, SQL Everywhere = SQL Prompt + (SQL Refactor * 0.5) + SQL Multi Script (roughly). So it's worth looking at what comes in the box...
Good explanation @KenJ (+1) @TRAD - What you need to do is talk with all devs/dbas in your organization. It makes little sense in buying different tools for each person. On top of tool parity where you are and the benefits of that, you can get bulk discounts too. I would have gone with Atlantis if we didn't already have Red-Gate for our dev tools. I find the IDE nicer and the Intellisense better than SQL Prompt - although SQL Prompt is far from bad, Atlantis just has more of everything.
For developer friendly database documentation you could take a look at Database Note Taker
http://databasenotetaker.com
What does that offer over & above, say, the SQL Doc tool from Red Gate, the DocXPress tool from Pragmatic, or SQLSpec from Elasoft, or ApexSQL's documentation tool? See, as you've written that response, it looks like you're shilling for whoever produces the tool that you've just recommended, and hence the thumbs-down.
recently had a similar dilemma. I was looking for a bundle or some separate products. I was considering products from Redgate, Devart and Apex. I'm not sure if I need to overpay for Redgate's tools cuz the same ones from other guys cost lower... or I'm wrong?
Before trying any such Tool one should take a test of free preview version. I personally use **SysTools** [SQL Database repair][1] and **SysTools** [SQL Log Recovery][2]. in case of corruption. I came to know about this tool from Microsoft MVP. Have a look what they say about **SysTools**: [
https://blog.sqlauthority.com/2014/02/11/sql-server-systools-sql-recovery-software-an-experiment-to-recover-database-corruption/][3] [
http://sqlblog.com/blogs/damian_widera/archive/2016/10/24/technical-review-systools-sql-recovery.aspx][4] [1]:
https://www.systoolsgroup.com/sql-recovery.html [2]:
https://www.systoolsgroup.com/sql-log-analyzer.html [3]:
https://blog.sqlauthority.com/2014/02/11/sql-server-systools-sql-recovery-software-an-experiment-to-recover-database-corruption/ [4]:
http://sqlblog.com/blogs/damian_widera/archive/2016/10/24/technical-review-systools-sql-recovery.aspx
I would like to suggest SQL database repair software from Stellar Data Recovery. This software repairs all the database objects like tables, triggers, stored procedures, indexes (clustered and non-clustered) from corrupt MDF and NDF file. It also recovers deleted records of the database. User can check the preview of repaired data and save in 4 different formats ( .MSSQL , HTML, CSV and .XLS). It is highly recommended software by Microsoft MVPs. You can read the software reviews from here: https://www.stellarinfo.com/mvp-reviews-testimonials.php?product=sql-database
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