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CA Datacom vs Foglight for Databases comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 1, 2026

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

CA Datacom
Ranking in Database Development and Management
25th
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
8.6
Number of Reviews
7
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Foglight for Databases
Ranking in Database Development and Management
1st
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.5
Number of Reviews
22
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2026, in the Database Development and Management category, the mindshare of CA Datacom is 1.2%, down from 1.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Foglight for Databases is 3.5%, down from 7.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Database Development and Management Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Foglight for Databases3.5%
CA Datacom1.2%
Other95.3%
Database Development and Management
 

Featured Reviews

it_user489183 - PeerSpot reviewer
IT Admin at a logistics company with 10,001+ employees
Scalability and the online maintainability of definitions are definite advantages for us
We've had it for so long, so it's status quo. But we've added all sorts of functionality to our applications and there are no issues with databases. Anything developers request, we're able to accomplish. Also, we deal a lot with government regulation - and not to talk about what the company does - but anything that they require of us, because we transmit data back and forth with them, we're able to do that with no problems. And there have been a lot of changes over the past five years that our government dictated regarding what we actually end up doing. So, we're able to be extremely flexible with that.
Vijay Ram - PeerSpot reviewer
Technical Engineer at Hitachi Systems, Ltd.
Centralized monitoring has simplified multi-database oversight and improved query analysis
Foglight for Databases is very useful; however, the negative side we face is that customer care support is not frequent. If any issues related to Foglight arise, we cannot reach customer care support as soon as possible. It takes much longer compared to other third-party tools, and that is a major issue we are facing with Foglight for Databases. Foglight for Databases is good for monitoring, and we can fetch problematic issues and queries. However, the only main drawback is the customer care support. It is available only during the general shift, so if any issue occurs after 6:00 p.m. or before 9:00 a.m., there is usually no one to handle it. I think there are only two or three people handling customer care for Foglight for Databases.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"The technical support staff with whom I have dealt are truly top notch; they understand whatever issue or question we might have and are able to supply quick and valid answers much of the time, or they fully engage in developing solutions when that is required."
"Scalability is definitely one thing. The size of the database can grow without any issues. We've got one database table that's got over a billion rows in it; quite a bit of data, and it handles access like a champ."
"Nowadays, CA is doing a lot of improving as far as online maintainability of definitions, which is a huge improvement over the past. I'm able to do a lot of changes without any outage."
"It does its job very well."
"It is a solid product."
"The initial setup is fairly straightforward for a mainframe product."
"This product is very stable, compared to a lot of other DBMSs that run in our shop."
"They are very responsive; they are always ready to meet any questions that we have or any needs that we have, and we get very personal one-on-one support when we need it with just top-notch service."
"Foglight for Databases provides real-time data that is invaluable for analyzing ongoing issues with database servers."
"Foglight for Databases is the best tool for monitoring all aspects such as database, backup information, storage information, and operating system side."
"The most valuable feature is the in-depth capability SQL Performance Investigator provides. It allows you to drill down to the smallest detail that occurs on our platform. It does a highly detailed and atomic follow-up of what one wants to look for in relation to time and our different instances."
"If you used to work without it, once you've used it, I'm not sure you'd want to do your job without it anymore."
"Using Foglight for Databases has been beneficial because it is a third-party tool that already has all of Dell's or Quest's experience, adding value in terms of ROI mainly through three avenues: less diagnostic time, fewer prolonged incidents, and less operational inefficiency."
"It enables you to pin down troubleshooting within 30 minutes to an hour, whereas before, you'd be pouring over reports or data from queries for days."
"My impressions of Foglight for Databases' ability to help me monitor a variety of aspects such as the OS, hybrid clouds, hardware, and databases across different platforms have been great so far."
"The alarms alert proactively if there are any potential or ongoing issues with the databases that we support. That means we can take preventive or corrective action before the issue becomes a big issue. And the SQL PI features enable us to drill down into performance issues in our databases so that we can improve performance, which is important."
 

Cons

"Something that we would like to see is for them to develop integration with open distribution systems."
"There are still some things - and I know they are working on some of them - but for the "no-outage maintainability" of things, they are making improvements as we speak, but there is definitely still room for more of that."
"The only minor issue that we have had with Datacom is in the installation guide: Some of the sizings for the databases have not really worked out for us, so we had to go in and resize them."
"I had trouble with an upgrade once but, when I have trouble with the upgrade there's always someone there to support me and get me through it really quickly."
"There are a lot of features that come out with each upgrade, but our application that runs on it has been around for a long time; they sort of decommissioned this application."
"The version that I'm using is not the latest version, so there might have been some improvement, but the OS monitoring is a bit lacking, and the high-availability option is a bit complicated to set up and it doesn't work all the time."
"Foglight for Databases could benefit from fewer generic alerts and more rules based on impact, priority, and action path, which would make it more useful for daily operations, on-call shifts, and incident follow-up."
"Better communication and alerts regarding the transaction logs getting full would also be beneficial. What I have noticed is that if the log files on the SQL server are full, we cannot log in and have to do some cleanup on the Foglight DB. It would be good if they could monitor that and alert us when it is getting too full."
"With the latest version, we have had many crashes, sometimes it stops working entirely, and it can take days to restart the service."
"Overall, I am happy with the product, but there are a few areas where it could be improved."
"The system is not that stable. We have been facing a lot of issues. We built a new store environment of Foglight, an environment for monitoring the Lowe's store servers, which are all Db2 servers. The objective is to monitor 800 Db2 servers in each Foglight instance. Up to 150 Db2 servers, the environment was working fine. The moment it crossed 150 or 160, we started having a lot of stability issues."
"Foglight does have a component that allows you to look at things in real time, but it's not as friendly or as efficient in terms of responsiveness as Quest Spotlight is. Foglight might be lacking in this department."
"I do not like the OS monitoring part of it much."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"It is cost-effective. With our EA, it is really based on the scale of our database environment. We found the Quest team to be reasonable and flexible when it comes to pricing and scaling of licenses."
"The price is worth it, if you have the time to go through the information."
"This is like the "Cadillac" of performance monitoring software. It's not cheap... I am currently with a company that I was able to convince that the product is worth the cost."
"Compared to the other tools on the market, Foglight is okay in terms of pricing and licensing."
"Pricing is very reasonable. We were able to construct a pretty easy contract with Quest, who were very easy to work with and very amenable to what we are trying to do. It worked out well for us."
"The price of Foglight could be a little more competitive in Chile, and it should be lowered for long-time customers— at least by 20 percent. Sometimes the price is a limitation. We have seven instances and nearly 5 million users. If Quest Foglight could reduce its prices for the clients that have been with it for a long time, we would be able to have more instances."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
No data available
Financial Services Firm
16%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
9%
Outsourcing Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Large Enterprise7
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business4
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise18
 

Questions from the Community

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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Quest Foglight for Databases?
I have had a good experience with the licensing costs of Foglight for Databases, as we have a provider who has given us good prices, and so far we have not had any cost problems. Regarding configur...
What needs improvement with Quest Foglight for Databases?
Overall, I am happy with the product, but there are a few areas where it could be improved. First, I think the user interface could be more modern and intuitive, especially for new users. Some dash...
What is your primary use case for Quest Foglight for Databases?
My main use case is database performance monitoring and troubleshooting. As a developer, I use Foglight for Databases to understand whether database performance is contributing to an application is...
 

Also Known As

DATACOM
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Blue Hill Data Services Inc.
CommitDBA
Find out what your peers are saying about CA Datacom vs. Foglight for Databases and other solutions. Updated: August 2026.
909,725 professionals have used our research since 2012.