If you are a database-conscious developer, chances are that you are keeping an eye out on the things that are happening in your database platforms. Whether you are running a single database instance or a bunch of database instances at once, you are keeping an eye out on your databases nonetheless – one of the things you are inevitably keeping an eye on is the activity that us going on inside of your database platforms.
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What are Database Resources?
Generally, you keep an eye out on the activity on your database platforms by:
-Observing the number of queries that are running on your database instances.
- Observing the amount of total and active sessions that are going on inside of your database instances
- Observing the number of sessions that are running per database platform and per a given database instance.
- Observing how many instances a given platform has, how many average or maximum sessions that database instance is running, etc.
Thankfully, you have a fellow that can help you with these kinds of issues - enter dbWatch Control Center.
Observing the Activity of Your Database with dbWatch
In order to observe the activity inside of your databases, you would need to use a couple of features available in dbWatch including:
- - Observing the amount of total and active sessions inside of your database instances.
- - Observing the number of total and active sessions per a given platform, per a given platform version, and database instance.
- - Observing the total sessions per the top x (say, 20) database instances you run.
For example, click on the database farm icon in dbWatch (that’s the third icon from the top), and you will be able to see your options. As we have already discussed, you will be able to see an inventory and resource overview, backup and maintenance overview, and also an activity overview.
Here’s how the overview of the activity in your database instances should look like when dbWatch is in use:
Explanatory, isn’t it? Take a good look: dbWatch will provide you with the number of total sessions in a given database instance, the number of sessions in the top 20 database instances you use (in this case, we only have one database instance – MySQL, but you can already see where we’re going with this), and also you will be able to filter the sessions per platform, version, and per instance. Say, you have a couple of database platforms: if you are a MySQL administrator and you will input “MySQL”, you will be able to observe the number of active sessions on your MySQL instances including the average and maximum amount. Oracle DBA? Input “Oracle” and you will be able to observe the number of active sessions on your Oracle instances, etc.
Click “Per platform” underneath the “Activity overview” and you will be able to see the amount of sessions per platform and the amount of logical reads per second:
With that being said, dbWatch can also assist you in tackling a number of different things not directly related to the activity inside of a given database platform – if you hover over the “Farm jobs”, for example, you will be able to see (and filter) all (!) of the database jobs existing in any of the database instances too: in other words, farm jobs are the collection of all dbWatch jobs across all of the database instances that you have – forgot which jobs are supposed to run on which database instance? Forgot to schedule them? Do not worry – check this section, and you should be good to go!
Summary
Keeping an eye out on the activity of the database platforms running in a given database farm or a database instance is a crucial task for every database administrator, no matter the flavor of database you run – it’s equally important if your database is a SQL Server and you’re dealing with the SQL Server Management Studio, it’s also important if you are dealing with Oracle, Sybase, or MariaDB. Database reports generated by dbWatch can help you make observing the activity inside of your database platforms a breeze – import a database instance, click a couple of buttons here and there, and you’re done.
Easy, isn’t it? Give dbWatch a try yourself – if you run into any kinds of issues, the support team will gladly assist you, so have no fear and launch the performance of your database instances into new heights today!
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Other blogs:
Running SQL Queries with Tools - dbWatch Control Center Edition
Top Tips for Oracle Database Monitoring
How is The Memory of Your SQL Server Doing?
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About the Author:
Lukas Vileikis is an ethical hacker and a frequent conference speaker.
Since 2014, Lukas has found and responsibly disclosed security flaws in some of the most visited websites in Lithuania.
He runs one of the biggest & fastest data breach search engines in the world - BreachDirectory.com, frequently speaks at conferences and blogs in multiple places including his blog over at lukasvileikis.com.
