Spotlight versus OEM

We have a client that is keen on installing a GUI tool for monitoring databases (most 9i, few 10g). They're considering Quest's Spotlight and OEM (including the OEM performance packs) as possible solutions. I understand they cost about the same.

I've never used Spotlight. Neither have I used OEM performance packs (just used barebones 9i OEM a while ago). I don't have a strong preference for either.

Any suggestions on which of these I ought to recommend? I am more inclined towards OEM (or now grid control), since it comes from Oracle..

PS: I've looked through the archives on this site. Some folks appear to be happy with Spotlight..while some others mention certain performance problems associated with it. It would be nice if there was a side by side feature comparison between the different monitoring tools.

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monitoring databases

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Axr2, Spotlight is not intended as a monitoring tool (according to a Quest tech-sales person I spoke to) it's a diagnostic tool(and I don't personally rate it for doing that unless you have big system-wide configuration issues). IMHO a more "apple for apples" comparison would be 10g Grid Control and Quest Foglight as both provide proper operational monitoring functionality e.g. page when a tablespace is 97% full, that kind of thing. I'm Using 10g Grid Control in production for monitoring 8.1.7.4.0 and 9iR2 databases. It pretty much works once you get the necessary patches applied, but Oracle's support for the product in terms of iTARs and so on is a bit patchy to say the least. One of Grid Control's stronger points is that it's easy to configure it so that you only get directly notfied about the good stuff and not the dross (no 2am pages because waits on db_file_sequential_read just reached x percent ;)). That said it's not quite as versatile as equivalent OS monitoring tools I've seen; both a strength and a weakness. As for Foglight, I've not used it.

Hacketta - thanks a lot. Got it - "Foglight" for monitoring and "Spotlight" for diagnostic issues.

However, the client is interested in buying a GUI tool for diagnosing issues as well (in addition to 24x7 monitoring). They're building a custom application, and will be running load tests. They want to use either Spotlight or OEM performance pack for troubleshooting any issues.

All that I've used for stuff like this, is statspack and some custom scripts in the past..

For what it's worth we use NORAD Surveillance and DBControl from Bradmark, an excellent tool in my opinion. I must say that I also use widely available monitoring scripts too, a bit of a belt and braces approach!