New Version of NCR's Database Query Manager
Assists More Efficient Use of Teradata Database
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NCR Corporation has introduced version 3.0 of its Database Query Manager, a client/server query management tool that helps customers more efficiently use their NCR Teradata relational databases. NCR's Database Query Manager prioritizes questions asked of the warehouse by type, based on current database workloads and estimated impact of the request to the system, and then schedules the jobs to run in the best possible order of execution. The new version of the tool is already in use at several Teradata customer sites, where it is managing user database query workloads by complexity to generate optimal response times.
Database Query Manager prevents complex queries from causing unacceptable system performance degradation by rescheduling those queries to periods of low database activity.
In a recently published market research note, Cambridge, MA-based Giga Information Group analyst Merv Adrian said, "With Teradata clearly leading the way in the very large database (VLDB) space, NCR's Database Query Manager technology will add a powerful argument to their value proposition. Teradata systems represent a substantial investment, and sound economics dictates that like all resources, they should be managed for optimal use. Teradata customers who use Database Query Manager should be able to significantly increase the number of users they support without degrading response times."
New features in Database Query Manager Version 3.0 include: Year 2000 compliance, a single Database Query Manager and Teradata ODBC driver for ease of system administration, and the ability to schedule jobs at five minute intervals. The enhancements are transparent to Database Query Manager system administrators and users.
"Query management is a vital dimension of data warehouse database operations and can cripple performance if not done correctly," said Dan Harrington, vice president of data warehouse marketing for NCR's Computer Systems Group. "Database Query Manager is an important component for managing and automatically optimizing the performance of the Teradata database, particularly in the sort of complex, decision-support data warehouse applications that our customers typically require."
Database Query Manager can be set to control access and usage of database objects by static criteria such as user ID, tables, or date and time. Query analysis controls can also be implemented to restrict or schedule queries according to anticipated processing time or by expected result size. System analysis controls provide yet another performance management dimension, managing query requests based on CPU and disk utilization, network activity, the number of currently executing queries, and the number of active users on the system.
Whenever pre-set system analysis thresholds are exceeded, Database Query Manager delays the submission of a query until system resources are available to process the job within acceptable parameters. Requests can also be scheduled by users to run without an active connection to the database, with the results retrieved later once the job has been completed.
Query analysis logging is provided to help analyze system workload and performance in order to tune the query analysis restrictions. When activated, query analysis logging captures detailed information about queries that are submitted as well as expected and actual execution statistics. This information can be used to set query analysis restriction thresholds appropriately, along with providing the ability to understand what kind of SQL is being submitted by groups of users.
Database Query Manager is shipping now, with tiered pricing based on the number of users supported. An entry-level 10-user license is available for $7,500, with pricing ranging up to $45,000 for an unlimited user site license.
Teradata provides industry-leading performance, unlimited scalability from 10 gigabytes to more than 100 terabytes, seamless connectivity and the lowest administration requirements of any database on the market. It employs a patented, shared-nothing MPP (massively parallel processing) architecture that can be deployed on both SMP (symmetric multi-processing) and MPP hardware platforms. Teradata runs on UNIX and Windows NT, and will be available on Sun Solaris. Visit the NCR Teradata web site at http://www.ncr.com/teradata