Upgraded BMC Tools Automate Repetitive Database-Management TasksUpgraded BMC Tools Automate Repetitive Database-Management Tasks

IT shops under pressure to boost efficiency and cut costs are automating as many management processes as possible, freeing up high-salaried workers for more important tasks. BMC Software Inc. this week is shipping the second generation of its SmartDBA administration tools for IBM's DB2 version 7 database to help companies reduce their database-management expenses.

"In today's economy, making your IT resources more efficient and effective is a major goal," says Richard Ptak, a principal of consulting firm Ptak & Associates. Tools such as BMC's SmartDBA do that by automating repetitive database-management tasks such as SQL statement tuning and database backup and recovery.

BMC's announcement includes new releases of its tools for DB2 on mainframes and distributed systems, including Windows, Unix, and Linux. For distributed systems, SQL-BackTrack for DB2 UDB now can recover tables from any point in time and send database and log backups to multiple locations. A new version of SQL-Explorer for DB2 UDB integrates SQL tuning capabilities with database diagnostics.

On the mainframe side, a new release of System Performance for DB2 provides task-view navigation and real-time monitoring and tuning. Application Performance for DB2 offers new index-analysis features, while the Database Performance for DB2 tool provides online reorganization capabilities that don't degrade database performance. A new release of Database Administration for DB2 supports multiterabyte databases and quickly migrates data from one DB2 environment to another. And the latest release of Recovery Management for DB2 offers enhanced disaster-recovery testing features and automatically determines optimal recovery strategies.

Starting prices for the mainframe software range from $21,800 for Application Performance for DB2 to $86,300 for Database Administration for DB2. For distributed systems, the starting price is $3,140 for SQL-Explorer for DB2 UDB and $5,610 for SQL-BackTrack for DB2 UDB.