If you are an avid user of software, you have probably noticed that many software solutions available on the web these days advertise themselves from the usability standpoint. One of the core things related to usability in this case would be the user experience, or so-called UX solutions. UX solutions let people experience products in all of their glory – a major part of user experience is the user interface, or the UI for short!
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Why is the UI Important?
The UI is a vital part of any software product because it’s the first thing that a user observes when choosing what kind of product would solve his or her problems best. The UI is also extremely important to users who already use a given software product, mainly because the easier the UI is to navigate through, the less hassle the users have when using the product. In our eyes, that’s a win-win for everyone involved.
The UI of dbWatch
As far as databases are concerned, there are quite a few database monitoring and management tools available, and all of them come with their unique downsides and also features. For example, one of the features of dbWatch is that it’s UI is very simple to understand – in the software world, simpler is usually better. The more simple a product looks, the better it is for a user to understand it. For example, launch dbWatch, and here’s what you will see – an intuitive database user interface, isn’t it?
First of all, you would need to define a server. Basically, dbWatch connects to a dbWatch Server to complete any of the operations it requires. Doesn’t the UI look intuitive in this case? dbWatch will even specify a local URL for you, so if you are testing dbWatch on your local environment, things couldn’t get easier than that. Simply define your user on the right-hand side, and you will be able to get started. See how easy everything becomes?
Once you have added your user, it’s time to add a database instance to monitor. In this case, observe the left-hand side of the screen, and you will be able to see that dbWatch will even provide you with some explanation of how you should import those into dbWatch: see all of the icons there too? Hover over them, and you will be able to see what they do – you will be able to run SQL queries on your database instances, observe their health, and, if you have a desire to, customize and run database jobs as well.
Before doing that though, it would probably be wise to add a database instance to dbWatch. You can do it by clicking the plus icon. Once again, the UI would be very intuitive and easy to understand – simply specify your database host, port, and your details, and you’re ready to roll.
Once you’re done with importing your databases into dbWatch, dbWatch will instantly tell you a little about how are they are doing. Once again, the UI is very easy to understand and straightforward – you will be able to see how many database instances are doing okay, how many have a lost connection status, how many are not monitored at all, etc. – simple, isn’t it?
If you’d find yourself needing to run database-related jobs on a given database instance, you will be able to easily do that too – in this case, dbWatch will even provide you with a little pie depicting the status of your database jobs and will list them all underneath:
Once they are listed, forget about executing tasks via the CLI – you will be able to simply right-click and run them (or check them out in more detail with other options as well):
For example, here’s how the details of a given job look like. dbWatch will once again provide you with a nice UI and will explain the job in more detail underneath – what’s not to like here?
Heck, scroll through the options and you will even see that dbWatch is able to provide you with the amount of active and inactive sessions, the amount of logical reads per second as well – not even talking about another one of the components of the UI – the top 20 databases graph. See how nice everything is? (Also, note the bottom right corner – dbWatch is even able to show you errors!) - in this case, dbWatch is telling us that we don’t have the compatibility for MySQL 5.6 enabled, see below:
Summary
We could be talking and talking about how neat the user interface of dbWatch is, but in order to use it in its full power, you would need to experience it yourself – why not do that now? The support team will gladly assist you if you’d need any help, so don’t hesitate and do it today!
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Other blogs:
Database for Senior Developers - Monitoring Database Tools
A Database admin's role in the modern age of DevOps
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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.
