| # | Question | Answer |
| 1 | What do you use DBPowerSuite for? | You use DBPowerSuite mainly to manipulate a database without manually attending the process. Most other database solutions require you to run a graphical interface to set up and run SQL. While a GUI is a great thing, a GUI becomes tedious and impractical when you must repeat a process.
So you run DBPowerSuite programs out of the box, or you incorporate them into shell scripts. Given the error-handling ability and the wide array of DBPowerSuite programs, you can do extremely complicated tasks easily and with peace of mind. |
| 2 | Why should I not run my own database's SQL session program, like sqlplus, pgsql or isql, from a script? | You can run sqlplus sessions from a script. Most companies do so because they have no other option. But DBPowerSuite has more ways to manipulate output . Moreover, DBPowerSuite without effort on your part, detects SQL errors which is crucial for any unattended operation.
You can use psOSQL internal commands to massage Oracle data making it importable to other databases, even to tables of a different database brand. You can create shell scripts which test the return code from any DBPowerSuite program. DBPowerSuite's SQL session programs return 0 when all SQL runs correctly. However, one warning or error causes that return code to change to a non-zero code. Therefore, you don't have to include any special PL/SQL logic in your program to trap errors, or write special UNIX scripts that greps the log of the SQL session. |
| 3 | Does DBPowerSuite generate SQL? | Yes. There are many programs in DBPowerSuite that can generate SQL. For example, psCopySchema generates all of the schema code from a Sybase database and ports to different Sybase server. There is another DBPowerSuite program that generates check and RI constraints for any database using the catalog from a different database. You can even write your own SQL templates and use DBPowerSuite to automatically fill your template keywords with DBPowerSuite-read database objects. |
| 4 | There are a lot of utility programs. What are they for? | Part of supporting databases includes supporting operations involved in any typical project. For example, when one writes a database installation script, one needs to replace hundreds of strings with site-specific data. DBPowerSuite includes psReplaceStrings for that purpose. psReplaceStrings is far easier to use than "sed".
Another example. DBAs, developers and infrastructure personnel are often faced with locating data processing bottlenecks. They must know the processing capabilities of each computer in order to effectively deploy hardware. For this task, DBPowerSuite provides psShowPerformance and psShowDiskPerforamce. psShowPerformance shows how fast a computer can access memory and compute simple arithemetic. psShowDiskPerformance shows how fast a computer can read to and write from disk. Both programs are capable of exercising all the CPUs at once. Net32, a company in Cary, North Carolina, used psShowPerformance to reveal that Dell's 6800 computer, though it has 8 CPUs, is painfully slow compared to Dell's 4-CPU 2950. Dell pushes 6800s on customers, but the 6800 is about 1/2 as fast in memory, CPU and disk performance compared to the half-as-expensive 2950. Unfortunately at the same time, psShowDiskPerformance also revealed that the Dell 2950 has a Perc/5i controller driver bug causing a severe bottleneck in synchronized disk writes on Red Hat Enterprise 5 systems which do not use the Linux LVM. In the end, Red Hat, Inc., and Dell Inc., now use DBPowerSuite to test their own products! |
| 5 | Can I add programs to DBPowerSuite? | Yes. DBPowerSuite is not just a bunch of out-of-the-box programs. We expose the API so that you can write your own programs. DBPowerSuite contains all the C++ header files, libraries and Makefiles so that you can roll your own. |
| 6 | Why didn't you write DBPowerSuite in Java? | DBPowerSuite is in C++. There are several reasons for this. The first reason is that DBPowerSuite predates Java. We added the first pieces to DBPowerSuite in 1986. The second reason is, is that we purposed DBPowerSuite to run fast as possible. C++ compiles to object code. Object code is still necessary to achieve speed.
DBPowerSuite, unlike a Java app, can be used in structural analysis projects because DBPowerSuite is written in C++. As a matter of fact, the first use of DBPowerSuite was for finite element computations of structures for underground and open pit mines. The second use for DBPowerSuite was for database uploads and downloads of terabyte size telemetry from NASA's Mars Observer spacecraft. DBPowerSuite has to be fast, and it has to handle lots of data. Java, unlike C++, is an interpreted language. A Java program runs inside a JVM--a Java Virtual Machine. The JVM itself adds computation time to the Java app. While the extra computation time is insignicant compared to the user-interaction time for a web application, that extra time becomes the bottleneck for many kinds of engineering and scientifiic algorithms. For example, engineers at the North Carolina Department of Transportation had to drop writing Java apps to do structural analyses of highway bridges because the JVM was adding days of processing time to their calculations. |
| 7 | Why do you offer so many packages of your product on Red Hat Linux? Even the very old versions? | Red Hat Enterprise Linux is a very stable flavor of Linux. We offer the older flavors of Red Hat, like version 7.2, because some companies migrate their databases off of old platforms.
We also offer the old version because we can. The underlying architecture of DBPowerSuite makes it very easy to support any brand of UNIX. As a matter of fact, using the DBPowerSuite program psPortCode, it is possible to support a new brand of UNIX in just a few hours. We generate a new package of DBPowerSuite for each new Linux for the sake of developers. If all we did was sell the programs, not the API, we wouldn't have to generate a new DBPowerSuite for each Linux. But developers developing on Red Hat 5 require that DBPowerSuite's libraries link to the operating system libraries that come with Red Hat 5. Hence, there is a DBPowerSuite package for each major Red Hat Linux release. If you are using SuSE Linux, you will have to equate whatever version of SuSE you are using with a Red Hat Enterprise version. You will need to match kernel levels. We also use the Enterprise versions for building and testing purposes, not the Fedora versions, because mainline databases like Oracle do not install on Fedora. |
| 8 | DBPowerSuite works on a Mac? Why? | DBPowerSuite works on a Mac because it is easy for us to make it work. Like the answer to question 7, it is easy for us to support any UNIX, even the hybrid UNIX that is Mac OS X. Supporting Mac is not a great business decision, but it is no sweat for us just in case a company wants to put its corporate database on a Mac.
By the way, MySQL is very popular on a Mac. |
| 9 | Are the programs and API thread-safe? | This is a developer question. By default, DBPowerSuite uses POSIX threads under the covers. However, DBPowerSuite supports several thread models. Regardless of model, the developer only uses the one UThread and one Mutex class. At link time, the developer chooses between linking with libpsSolarisThreads, libpsPosixThreads, libpsNOOPThreads, or libpsOSVThreads. libpsOSVThreads for Sybase Open Servers. |
| 10 | Why are there so many Sybase programs? | The first database DBPowerSuite supported was Sybase. The employees of Talus Software are still very fond of Sybase. While Sybase is not so popular in the USA anymore, it is only because of Sybase's lack of marketting ability, not its lack of technical ability. In our opinion, Sybase still has the cleanest, most efficient, and most elegant database. The major company's products that honor Sybase by copying Sybase, are Microsoft 's SQL Server and MySQL.
If you are a Sybase user, DBPowerSuite becomes extra powerful. You can do a whole lot of things if you have a Sybase database in house. You can download a free Sybase developer's server from Sybase. |
| 11 | I see that you sell the source code? Does any company use the DBPowerSuite source code? | Yes. Atlas Solutions, a subsidiary of Microsoft Corporation, licenses the DBPowerSuite source code. Altas embeds the all the DBPowerSuite ODBC, generic database and some of the utility classes in their AdManager product. Atlas embeds the code in their AdManager UNIX and WIndows solutions . Even though Talus Software does not have a formal Windows offering, parts of DBPowerSuite have been ported to Microsoft Windows. |
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