Informix I-Spy Delivers Monitoring And Optimization
Solution For Informix Data Warehouses
ACTION ITEMS
Informix Corporation, a technology leader in enterprise database-powered solutions, has announced the general availability of Informix I-Spy.
I-Spy, a new component of the Informix Decision Frontier Solution Suite, is a smart data warehouse monitoring and optimization tool designed for Informix data engines. I-Spy helps administrators and architects increase the business value of enterprise data warehouses and data marts through enhanced utilization efficiency, design improvements and a lower cost of maintenance.
I-Spy provides a transparent monitoring system between the data engine and the client which gives administrators the ability to assess data warehouse usage. Administrators can review queries and query plans for more suitable tuning and resource allocation, and then optimize the data model and indexing strategy for better, faster decision-making.
Rule-based constraints help administrators qualify queries posed to the system in order to minimize inefficient use of the data warehouse. With a user-friendly web-based interface, I-Spy provides query performance statistics that can highlight critical usage patterns such as long-running or repetitive queries.
Using Informix I-Spy, administrators can take a proactive approach to managing data warehouse growth through planning efforts based on performance and utilization reports. These features help reduce the total cost of ownership of a data warehouse environment through superior capacity planning and data management.
In addition, I-Spy enables data warehouse architects to assess usage in order to refine their data warehouse data models. Architects can analyze query plans, develop optimal indexing and partitioning strategies, and determine how fact and dimension tables are being utilized in the query plans. I-Spy captures all client activity and stores it in an activity database, enabling quick and accurate assessments and reducing analytic overhead.
"Informix I-Spy has been a valuable tool for understanding the utilization of our data warehouse," commented beta user Keith Hilgendorf, system manager for Sears. "When using I-Spy, we obtain critical statistics on queries, response times, and records returned. This information allows us to isolate peak demand periods for prioritizing work, perform trending analysis for capacity planning, and identify the heaviest users so we can focus on assisting them in optimizing analysis. I-Spy has proven to be an important component for validating the overall value of our data warehouse investment."
"Informix customers have made significant and strategic investments in developing and deploying their data warehouses, and they need to be able to ensure that these valuable resources are being used in an optimal way," said Bob Walters, vice president, business development, Data Warehouse Division at Informix. "By adding Informix I-Spy to our Decision Frontier Solution Suite, we have delivered a superior method for ensuring data warehouse optimization, which helps our customers achieve a greater return on their data warehouse investment."
Availability
Informix I-Spy version 1.0 is scheduled to be generally available in January, 1999.
About Informix
Informix Corporation, based in Menlo Park, Calif., provides innovative database products that assist the world's major corporations to attain competitive advantage. Informix is widely recognized as a technology leader for corporate computing environments ranging from small workgroups to very large parallel processing applications.
Informix's database server, application development tools, superior customer service, and strong partnerships enable the company to be at the forefront of major information technology solution areas including data warehousing, high performance OLTP, and Web/e-commerce. For more information, contact the sales office nearest you or visit our Web site at http://www.informix.com.