DATABASE PERFORMANCE MONITORING: USE OF SOFTWARE TOOLS AND TRADITIONAL PRACTICES

A database must perform quickly and accurately to be useful to an organization. To monitor database performance, a database administrator (DBA) analyzes many types of data. As the complexity of database systems increases, so does the amount of required information. Recently available software tools facilitate this information gathering process for the DBA. This study describes a survey of database professionals that used Internet newsgroups and discussion forums to determine DBAs ' use of traditional performance management practices, such as system tweaking and benchmarking, and these software tools. Although survey response was small, examination of responses uncovered some common themes. Traditional practices were still used. DBAs overall did not use many tools, for many reasons, but agreed that the generated information would have been useful and necessary. To construct this data, they used scripts or functions built into the database. The study provides a basis for future research into database performance management. Headings