Server Studio

Highlights

Server Studio™ is the premier multi-platform professional development and management environment for IBM Informix® servers with an intuitive graphical user interface which seamlessly integrates feature-rich, powerful and compact suite of advanced DBMS tools that make support of your vital databases throughout their entire operational life cycle easier and more productive than ever.

Server Studio together with Sentinel™ form a powerful solutions infrastructure with wide-ranging capabilities that helps both seasoned database professionals and novices alike manage IBM Informix data servers environment with unparallel ease and improved productivity - from initial design, development and testing, all the way through to production deployment and successful operational service.

Key features include:

• Administration - Server Administrator module is a state-of-the-art integrated workbench that provides a well-rounded graphical environment for DBAs and developers to manage one or multiple IBM Informix database servers with ease. Interactive multi-tabbed console of the Object Explorer eliminates lengthy properties drill-downs to help you immediately examine in-depth all details of the selected object and allows you to quickly create, drop or alter database objects to accommodate business and application needs. It provides powerful views and pre-configured reports of performance information across multiple instances or databases and helps you handle common everyday tasks such as: managing user sessions and server's operational modes, examining server's profile, ONCONFIG parameters, I/O statistics and the log files details. The built-in secure terminal automatically connects to the desired server host and sets all required environment variables, enabling you to execute transparently any of your favorite utilities, such as ONSTAT, ONMODE, ONTAPE, ONBAR, as well as any other server-side script or shell command.
  
  
• Development and Debugging - Server Studio is a comprehensive integrated development environment with powerful graphical editors for coding stored procedures, SQL scripts and schemas objects that improve productivity and dramatically decrease development time by replacing the traditional error-prone, time-consuming, command-line-driven query and script execution facilities. These multi-threaded, non-blocking editors allow you to work simultaneously on multiple database objects or external files. SPL Debugger module provides interactive debugging of stored procedures and triggers to improve efficiency and to ease application development.
  • New: Entity/Relationship Diagrams feature of the Schema Manager enables near instantaneous graphical analysis of complex relationships and dependencies between database objects, such as: Tables, Views, Indexes, Stored Procedures and Triggers. E/R Diagrams provide vital help in visualizing and documenting databases' logical design and constraints. It permits reverse-engineering the logical schema of the entire database or creation of sub-schema E/R Diagrams to the desired level of object nesting, based on user-selected subset of database objects.
  • New: SQL Manager's code completion feature assists during code development to look up and finalize table, views and column names, plus commonly used SQL keywords. Execution Plan Analyzer's integration with SQL Manager enables near instantaneous graphical analysis of execution plan for all SQL statements contained in the editor's active panel, with relative percentage of the overall estimated cost presented for each distinct SQL statement to highlight potential segments of code that may negatively impact performance.
• Pre-Deployment Testing - Benchmark Runner module effectively simulates real-life scenarios of hundreds or thousands of users simultaneously accessing your database application to pinpoint bottlenecks and set database performance benchmarks by gathering the required database performance facts needed to identify point-of-system failures and achieve required levels of performance. Data Manager module can quickly and easily populate test databases with millions of rows of meaningful, syntactically correct test data, while maintaining full referential integrity - enabling application testing with enough data to give a realistic picture of database performance in the production environment.
  
  
• Change Management - Schema Manager module eases the deployment of database schema changes from development to test to production systems by managing database objects' dependencies while maintaining control with extensive change documentation. The Dependencies Analyzer module is a graphical change impact analysis tool that helps examine in a convenient drill-down tree form "up" and "down" dependencies and usage pattern of any database object, including complex referential integrity constraints and call trees for stored procedures and triggers. The DB Difference Analyzer module performs comprehensive comparative analysis of all database objects' properties between two databases instances including table structures, referential integrity, fragmentation, syntax of stored procedures, triggers and views and it can automatically generate full database synchronization scripts based on comparison results.
  • New: Data Difference functionality of the DB Difference Analyzer facilitates efficient tracking of changes of the data contained in tables or database systems' metadata.
• Storage Management and Database Reorganization - Server Administrator module's Storage Manager helps create or delete DB Spaces, BLOB Spaces and Chunks with ease and provides a graphical representation of data storage space utilization to quickly detect problems such as low scan density and high fragmentation in your databases. The built-in Reorganization Wizard improves utilization efficiency of scarce data storage resources and optimizes database performance by reorganizing table structure and data allocation to reduce the number of table extents, reclaiming wasted space, moving data to a different DB Spaces or fragmenting it across multiple DB Spaces - all with minimal application downtime.
  
  
• Data Management - Data Manager module's spreadsheet-style grid facilitates interactive examination and editing of the data in the tables, synonyms and views. Flexible rules - based on user-defined filters, sorts or rows retrieval limits - help in defining working data sets. Powerful Data Import and Export Wizards assist in mapping multiple external data files to database objects and defining complex data transformation rules. Data Manager fully supports non-blocking execution of multiple data loading and unloading jobs against a single or multiple databases simultaneously.
  • New: High Performance Loader ("HPL") intuitive, easy-to-use graphical management facilities provide efficient loading and unloading of vast volumes of data from or to any combination of the data sources such as files, tapes, or application pipes (for UNIX). HPL Manager fully supports generation of the HPL components such as device array definitions, formats, queries, maps, filters and projects. Its client/server architecture enables efficient administration of onpload database on any Informix data server across the enterprise network. Server Administrator's DB Reorg functionality takes full advantage of HPL's capability to efficiently manage loading and unloading massive quantities of data during database reorganization.
• Security Administration - Permissions Manager module significantly reduces the complexities of managing database security. You can: add new or edit the existing users and roles to a database; grant or revoke permissions for users, roles and database objects; and assign users to roles.
  
  
• SQL Tuning - Query Execution Plan Analyzer module helps to optimize performance of SQL queries through automatic analysis of the execution plan selected by the server's query optimizer. SQL Capture facilitates dynamic retrieval of SQL statements running on the IBM Informix server, based on specified selection criteria such as: session user login name, client host, Informix session ID, or SQL statement's estimated cost, estimated number of retrieved rows or number of sequential scans.
  • New: Graphical Diagrams and Tree views support detail examination of execution plans for either single or multiple SQL statements. Query Execution Plan Analyzer also provides graphical analysis of execution plan for all SQL statements contained in a stored procedure, with relative percentage of the overall estimated cost presented for each distinct SQL statement to highlight potential segments of code that may negatively impact performance.
• Performance Diagnostics and Automation - Server Studio together with Sentinel? provide an extensive array of sophisticated diagnostics tools to optimize server's performance, based on collected continuous time-series measurement data for over 160 real-time operational parameters of the IBM Informix® data server and its host platform. Collected measurements data is presented either as multi-parameter time-series charts or hourly, daily or monthly histograms to perform diagnostic analysis and resource-utilization profiling.
  
  

Benefits

Server Studio delivers the following benefits:

• Helps seasoned database professionals and novices alike manage IBM Informix server environments efficiently with a comprehensive set of powerful database system administration tools.
  
  
• Enables you to maximize the availability, performance and manageability of your entire IBM Informix infrastructure from a single point of control, regardless of whether your database servers are in one location or at remote sites.
  
  
• Simplifies complexities of managing data servers with a highly-intuitive graphical console which provides a powerful set of seamlessly integrated, system management tools that minimize error-prone, time-consuming, command-line-driven administrative tasks.
  
  
• Helps keep your database servers performing at peak levels with an extensive assortment of wide-ranging analytical tools to diagnose and respond to performance and availability problems in real time.
  
  
• Improves efficiency of data storage resources utilization by performing database reorganization and restructuring with minimal application downtime, comprehensive space management and data capacity planning facilities.
  
  
• Provides comprehensive configuration auditing and change management solution for data servers to preserve your database investment.
  
  
• Provides an extensive array of sophisticated analytical tools to diagnose performance problems in real time by graphically displaying all database activity in an intuitive user interface, enabling quick response to issues that need attention.
  
  
• Simplifies systems administration with a rich set of reports for accessing your server's performance and data storage space utilization.