What do you think of dbconsole? What would you like it to do?

[Former Member]

We are re-evaluating the functionality contained in dbconsole and we'd like your input. Any thoughts you'd be willing to share would be most welcome. In particular we're interested in:

• What features in dbconsole do you use?
  
• What existing features are most important to you?
• What features would you really like to see added? (Feel free to dream. All suggestions welcome!)
• Anything else you want totell us about dbconsole.

To get the discussion going, here are a few areas where we could add functionality:

• Managing the database transaction log. For example, allowing you to truncate the log, add/remove a mirror log, start/stop having a transaction log. Think of functionality similar to what dblog currently has.
• Ability to run/restore backups.
• Functionality for investigating locking, blocking and deadlock issues.
• Simple user management functionality. For example, resetting user passwords, locking/unlocking user accounts
• Ability to identify if there are patches available for your database server.
• Control over various kinds of logging that can be enabled on a database server.

Let me know if any of these seem useful or not.

Thanks for any input you can share.

Dave

[Breck_Carter]

I like dbconsole, but I don't use it :)... instead, I look at its feature set from time to time to see if anything should be added to Foxhound. Some stuff I take, and other stuff I leave alone because Sybase Central and/or ISQL also do it, and Foxhound is primarily a passive monitor.

Clients use dbconsole a lot on engines started as services, as a system tray icon alternative.

If you grow dbconsole into a full-featured tool (which it is not, now), please take a conservative GUI and API implementation path. Do not use Java, and do not use Flash... Java's always two generations behind actual OS GUIs, and Flash doesn't let you resize fonts or do copy and paste. Browser-based is fine, but don't go down the rabbit hole of some strange proprietary short-lived alternative to normal JavaScript and HTML.

If browser-based, then make sure it works on tablets... so very many websites have only two display modes: workstation versus smartwatch.

[MCMartin]

I would like to see its functions being added to Sybase Central. So that you don't need 2 tools.

Dream: Let the tool connect to a database server which is not accepting any standard connections. (this would probably mean to create a second purely administrative connection mechanism)

[Breck_Carter]

Let us sing the praises of "Martin's Dream"... some ability to "get in there" and determine WTF is going on when a server goes catatonic as far as regular connections are concerned. This could be a special client utility that does not need all the overhead of regular client-server connections, just something that can probe-and-report on what's going on... possibly bypassing the query engine altogether, and all the related superstructure code, and look at the fundamentals. Whether this is dbconsole or not isn't important, but the feature should use, as Martin puts it, "a second purely administrative connection mechanism."

I am guessing such a facility EXISTS ALREADY for internal use 🙂

[Former Member]

Setting the font to a monospaced font for messages would be nice (possible in Linux because of the OS) Setting the tab size would also be nice - generally use 4 instead of 8.

[thomas_duemesnil]

I use dbconsole regulary. My expierience is mostly based on sa10 Version

• dbconsole is the only way to get hold of the console output of the server (without programming)

Missing Features

• Select multiple Connections and be able to disconnect all of them in one go.
• Save different layouts for the Connection View Pane and make it possible to switch between them easily. Provide a usefull default that can be restored if you messed the system up 😉
• Don't use the Property Description as the Caption in the Connection view. They are so long and the column layout is not optimized
• Reuse the defined Connections in Sybase Central to connect to the server
• Show the Properties of a selected connection when we user right clicks and select 'Options...'. Currently you show dbconsole Options in that case.

Your Proposals To get the discussion going, here are a few areas where we could add functionality:

• Managing the database transaction log.
• No opinion
• Ability to run/restore backups.
• I run backups always by script and don't think i would use this.
• Functionality for investigating locking, blocking and deadlock issues.
  • Could be usefull extension
• Simple user management functionality. For example, resetting user passwords, locking/unlocking user accounts
• Ability to identify if there are patches available for your database server.
• This would be interesting in SQL Monitor. Monitor could send Mail if new patch comes available. You have it already in Sybase Central and this is Ok for me.
• Control over various kinds of logging that can be enabled on a database server.
• This could help in debugging the session

Hope i could give some ideas. Would be glad to give more details if necessary.

Thomas

[Former Member]

Thanks for this, Thomas. You mentioned looking at the console output of the server. What sorts of messages do you look for there? Error messages? Messages from your application?

[thomas_duemesnil]

I have some debugging messages in my application where I log to console. But that happens more during development. Sometime I stumble uppon deadlocks or raiserror conditions that would other wise go unnoticed.

[VolkerBarth]

FWIW, I don't use DBCONSOLE at all (I guess I stopped using a separate DB monitor after using DBWATCH v5.5:) - my database servers always do use -o, so the console output is available as text file (and I'm using MESSAGEs quite often within procedures and the like...). - When I do need to access the console log immediately, I do use a particular stored procedure (called "STP_ShowLastLogMessages()") that uses the builtin properties like "MessageText" to list the last n messages. (BTW: That old answer shows that procedure - though MessageText and the related properties have been deprecated now...)

To view connections and users (and locks, though that has only rarely been an issue here), I use DBISQL (or mostly still dbisqlc) with sa_conn_info() and the like.

That is still enough for my needs - somewhat I don't like "heavy UI consoles" to monitor these database servers.

Just my two cents, apparently.

[VolkerBarth]

A late remark:

So the new SQL Anywhere Cockpit - introduced in v17 - is the primary answer to that poll?

To cite from the v17 "What's New" setion:

Removal of dbconsole - The Cockpit replaces the graphical administration tool dbconsole, which has been removed from the software.