CA Datacom vs Foglight for Databases comparison

Broadcom and Quest Software are both solutions in the Database Development and Management category. Broadcom is ranked #26, while Quest Software is ranked #2 with an average rating of 8.2. Broadcom holds a 1.4% mindshare in DDM, compared to Quest Software’s 7.6% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of Broadcom users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 93% of Quest Software users who would recommend it.

CA Datacom

Read 7 CA Datacom reviews

224 Views
188 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Foglight for Databases

Read 14 Foglight for Databases reviews

1,842 Views
1,824 Comparison Views

93% willing to recommend

CA Datacom

Foglight for Databases

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Aug 19, 2025

CA Datacom and Foglight for Databases are both key players in the database management and monitoring sector. Based on the analysis, Foglight for Databases appears to have the upper hand due to its comprehensive feature set that justifies its investment.

Features: CA Datacom is recognized for high-performance database management, transaction processing, and efficient use for batch workloads and transactions. Its stability with high CIC transaction rates and handling large data volumes makes it reliable for significant data updating and flow management. Foglight for Databases offers advanced monitoring with real-time activity screens, sophisticated analytics, an intuitive central dashboard, and extensive database support. These features enable comprehensive data insight and proactive issue resolution.

Room for Improvement: CA Datacom could enhance user-friendly reporting capabilities and expand its adaptability to varying database environments. Its batch processing functionalities could further benefit from increased flexibility. Furthermore, more robust documentation might aid users in navigating its capabilities. Foglight for Databases can improve by refining its UI for even easier navigation. The customization aspects could be streamlined for user flexibility. Additionally, the inclusion of more out-of-the-box alerts would provide added value in unexpected trouble situations.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: CA Datacom offers a straightforward deployment process, focusing on simplicity and integrated customer support. This ensures smooth system integration with minimal disruption. Foglight for Databases, while having a complex deployment, allows for high customization. Its specialized support assists users in maximizing its sophisticated monitoring capabilities, helping to navigate the initial setup complexity efficiently.

Pricing and ROI: CA Datacom is praised for being a cost-effective solution with a reasonable initial investment and rapid ROI, making it suitable for budget-conscious entities. Foglight for Databases, although involving higher upfront costs, provides value through its extensive features leading to improved database performance. Its long-term benefits can potentially offer a higher ROI for organizations prioritizing advanced functionality over initial costs.

To learn more, read our detailed CA Datacom vs. Foglight for Databases Report (Updated: July 2025).

Buyer's Guide

CA Datacom vs. Foglight for Databases

July 2025

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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

26th

Average Rating

9.0

Reviews Sentiment

8.6

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Foglight for Databases

Ranking in Database Development and Management

2nd

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

7.2

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2025, in the Database Development and Management category, the mindshare of CA Datacom is 1.4%, up from 0.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Foglight for Databases is 7.6%, up from 7.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Database Development and Management

Featured Reviews

it_user489183

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.

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Stuart Dairiki

Senior IT Manager at a wholesaler/distributor with 1,001-5,000 employees

Empowers efficient database monitoring and performance troubleshooting with powerful workload analysis

I find it extremely helpful to use Foglight to triage any database issues, specifically performance issues using what Foglight calls PI investigator. It is a very powerful workload analysis tool that helps me understand where bottlenecks are. It allows me to see performance issues as end users report them. It can save time and effort when doing root cause analysis. It enables me to obtain information quicker and easier compared to manually compiling it. Foglight provides us with a near-real-time activity database. It's not 100% real-time. It has less than a minute latency. It allows us to see performance issues as end-users report them. We started seeing benefits pretty much immediately. We use Foglight to display intensive databases. However, it's not something we monitor regularly. It's only something we kind of dig into as we troubleshoot and triage issues. It does help us determine potential IT help issues. When we use Foglight, we find it helps drill down holistically into potential bottlenecks. It helps us to see what is going on in the database. Foglight allows us to monitor multiple database platforms. We use, for example, Oracle, SQL Server, Postgres, Amazon Redshift, and SAP HANA. It gives us insight into our entire landscape of production workloads in near real-time. The solution saves costs when performing root cause analysis. It can save time and effort when doing root cause analysis. It allows us to obtain information quicker and easier than by manually compiling information.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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."

"The initial setup is fairly straightforward for a mainframe product."

"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 is a solid product."

"It definitely cuts down on our support costs. I do not get woken up in the middle of the night very often for a problem with Datacom."

"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."

"The ability to monitor multiple database platforms streamlines our database operations. The single pane of glass is what we were really after when we picked Foglight. We knew we wanted something that could monitor cross-platform because it does save a lot of time to use the same tool. The one thing that I like with Foglight is that we don't have to install anything locally, like agents, directly on the database servers. That was also a big seller because it simplifies things."

"We went from basically 30% coverage of our production environment to 100% coverage."

"The platform is very stable."

"The profiler allows us to look at the profiles of the database queries that are being run over time. It allows us to go back to our customers and say that these are some of the queries causing them some headaches. It gives us the opportunity to provide suggestions on how to improve their experience."

"The real-time activity screens are also helpful... if there is something that is running slowly, we can eliminate the database as being an issue and perhaps look at the server, network activity, or something outside of the realm of the database as being the issue."

"Its reporting capabilities are immense."

"Foglight's Change Tracking capabilities are another huge feature. It is wonderful to be able to do that. People don't realize the amount of information that Foglight gathers from a given server or instance. It gets down to the version of SQL, the disk array, everything that's there. Any change that's made, any upgrade to SQL, shows up on the dashboard almost immediately. You don't know how much time you save just having a tool in your back pocket that does that for you."

More Foglight for Databases pros

Cons

"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."

"The monitoring capabilities for Postgres should be at par with SQL Server. This is the area where we push back on our Quest representative. We want more insights into Postgres."

"I get a lot of alerts that, while important, are not critical. Then I have to dig in and figure out how to turn alerts off, but not the logging. I want to be able to go back, once we get the other big issues out of the way, and start fine-tuning some of those other areas, but I don't necessarily want to receive an email for all of them."

"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."

"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."

"It would be amazing if they could enable the "Performance Investigator" functionality across all database platforms."

"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."

"Quest must release a Spanish version. That's critical because not everyone speaks English in Latin America. It's an excellent product, so it's super important that they offer the application and customer service in Spanish."

"It would be amazing if they could enable the 'Performance Investigator' functionality across all database platforms."

More Foglight for Databases cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available

"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."

"The price is worth it, if you have the time to go through the information."

"Compared to the other tools on the market, Foglight is okay in terms of pricing and licensing."

"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."

"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."

"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."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

No data available

Financial Services Firm

13%

Government

11%

Computer Software Company

10%

Manufacturing Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Quest Foglight for Databases?

The pricing is palatable. We've already done one renewal and we are in our second contract. We're happy thus far.

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What needs improvement with Quest Foglight for Databases?

It would be amazing if they could enable the "Performance Investigator" functionality across all database platforms. I've been talking to their product development team about enhancements that I wo...

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What is your primary use case for Quest Foglight for Databases?

I primarily use the solution for database monitoring, specifically for Oracle, Microsoft SQL Server, Postgres, SAP HANA, and AWS Redshift.

See all answers

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Database Development and Management

July 2025

Download CA Datacom product report

Buyer's Guide

Foglight for Databases

August 2025

Download Foglight for Databases product report

Also Known As

DATACOM

No data available

Overview

CA Datacom enables the continuous availability of your business applications. Datacom, and its family of rDBMS products, provides you with a reliable database repository with enterprise-wide, high-volume workload and fault-tolerant capabilities.

Broadcom

Foglight for Databases offers comprehensive monitoring with real-time activity screens and adaptive baselines. It provides a 360-degree overview and efficient UI, requiring no custom scripts, aiding in proactive issue identification and resolution before impacting end users.

Foglight for Databases is a robust tool for monitoring across multiple platforms, including SQL and Oracle. It provides features like the "Morning Coffee" dashboard and SQL Performance Investigator, enabling effective workload analysis and historical investigation. Despite some challenges with sluggish performance on large data volumes and excessive non-critical alerts, it remains a preferred choice for its ability to support proactive management and resource planning. Users appreciate its centralized view of extensive database systems, enabling swift detection and resolution of issues in real-time.

What are the key features?

Comprehensive Monitoring: Provides cross-platform real-time monitoring, ensuring effective database management.
Adaptive Baselines: Adjusts to various workloads, enhancing monitoring accuracy.
SQL Performance Investigator: Offers detailed workload analysis without server impact.
Proactive Alerts: Delivers timely notifications, aiding in immediate issue resolution.
Efficient UI: Streamlines user interaction, minimizing the need for custom scripts.

What benefits and ROI should be considered?

Time Saving: Reduces time in root cause analysis, enhancing productivity.
Proactive Management: Detects issues before they affect end users, minimizing downtime.
Resource Planning: Aids in effective allocation planning for enterprise and cloud platforms.

Foglight is extensively implemented in industries managing extensive database systems, handling numerous servers to ensure availability and performance. It assists businesses in resolving blocking and locking deadlocks, crucial for maintaining smooth operations in production and development environments.

Quest Software

Sample Customers

Blue Hill Data Services Inc.

CommitDBA

Buyer's Guide

CA Datacom vs. Foglight for Databases

July 2025

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