CA IDMS vs Foglight for Databases comparison

Broadcom and Quest Software are both solutions in the Database Development and Management category. Broadcom is ranked #28, while Quest Software is ranked #2 with an average rating of 8.2. Broadcom holds a 1.3% mindshare in DDM, compared to Quest Software’s 3.8% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of Broadcom users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 93% of Quest Software users who would recommend it.

CA IDMS

Read 5 CA IDMS reviews

584 Views
269 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Foglight for Databases

Read 14 Foglight for Databases reviews

2,014 Views
1,994 Comparison Views

93% willing to recommend

CA IDMS

Foglight for Databases

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Nov 23, 2025

CA IDMS and Foglight for Databases compete in the database management and monitoring realm. Foglight for Databases seems to have the upper hand due to its enhanced features, making it a preferred choice despite the higher cost.

Features: CA IDMS provides robust database architecture, high reliability, and security for mainframe environments. Foglight for Databases offers advanced monitoring capabilities with real-time analytics, broad compatibility with diverse database systems, and adaptive baseline monitoring.

Room for Improvement: CA IDMS could enhance deployment flexibility, adapt to modern cloud environments, and reduce complexity in setup. Foglight for Databases may improve UI intuitiveness, streamline setup processes, and expand adaptive baselines to more database types.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: CA IDMS offers traditional mainframe deployment with strong legacy support, requiring dedicated resources. Foglight for Databases provides flexible cloud or on-premise deployment with comprehensive customer service, leading in adaptability and support.

Pricing and ROI: CA IDMS offers lower initial setup costs, appealing for cost-effective mainframe solutions with sustainable ROI. Foglight for Databases, though costlier initially, delivers strong ROI via cutting-edge features and performance efficiencies, making it a strategic investment for future-oriented businesses.

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

Buyer's Guide

CA IDMS vs. Foglight for Databases

December 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 IDMS

Ranking in Database Development and Management

28th

Average Rating

9.0

Reviews Sentiment

7.8

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 January 2026, in the Database Development and Management category, the mindshare of CA IDMS is 1.3%, up from 0.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Foglight for Databases is 3.8%, down from 7.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Database Development and Management Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Foglight for Databases	3.8%
CA IDMS	1.3%
Other	94.9%

Database Development and Management

Featured Reviews

Alfredo Silva

ALiBS Solutions at ALiBS Solutions

Helps us to manage user profiles very quickly and in an assertive way

I would rate this solution 9 out of 10. I would advise that they should evaluate other possibilities because this is a very quickly changing environment and there are other possible providers that have good solutions. I would do some kind of test. I would test other possible solutions too and compare them.

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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

"Technical support is very good. They are very knowledgeable, very quick to respond, and very nice people, too."

"It is a really stable platform. It has been around for many years. We trust it implicitly. "

"The most useful feature is the governance feature, because it can show us and help us to manage user profiles very quickly and using it in assertive way."

"The PI module allows [my colleague] to identify which new indexes or modified indexes are going to make the biggest impact."

"What I really like is the SQL PI feature, which allows us to drill down into queries and identify what is causing contention in the database. Using the SQL PI feature, I am able to drill down into the queries, see what is blocking, and try to improve it."

"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."

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

"The platform is very stable."

"One of the hardest things to do in database management is to evaluate performance deviation across time. The adaptive baseline that Quest is using is by far the most helpful. That doesn't necessarily mean I use it on a daily basis, but it is something that I have not been able to find in any other tool, at the same level."

"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."

"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."

More Foglight for Databases pros

Cons

"Right now, it's not easy to start using this solution. You have to take long course and train people. It's not an easy path."

"I would like to see it made simpler to operate and maintain."

"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."

"The data model needs improvement when it comes to creating custom reports. That is an area where it needs a bit of improvement. Foglight gathers a lot of information around our databases as part of its monitoring. While I know all this information is in there, trying to pull the metric we want out for custom reports is sometimes hard to find. One nice thing about Foglight is that you can create custom dashboards, which you can easily convert to reports. We would be doing a lot more of that if it weren't for the challenging data model."

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

"When we decided to go with Foglight, a lot of people stopped using the diagnostics part because it was very intimidating... They still won't use it because they feel it's too intimidating. They will open something up and not know what to do. It's not very user-friendly. You have to click on a lot of stuff to find the information."

"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."

"When holding data for two years for 20 SQL Servers, the reporting becomes sluggish and unresponsive."

More Foglight for Databases cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Do not hold back on asking questions about the maintenance and continued support of the product."

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

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

"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."

"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."

"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."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

18%

Manufacturing Company

11%

Government

10%

University

Financial Services Firm

12%

Government

11%

Manufacturing Company

10%

University

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

No data available

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	2
Midsize Enterprise	2
Large Enterprise	10

Questions from the Community

Ask a question

Earn 20 points

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

Comparisons

IBM IMS vs CA IDMS

Compared 61% of the time

CA Datacom vs CA IDMS

Compared 18% of the time

Spotlight vs CA IDMS

Compared 13% of the time

BMC AMI DevX vs CA IDMS

Compared 9% of the time

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Spotlight vs Foglight for Databases

Compared 23% of the time

SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer vs Foglight for Databases

Compared 14% of the time

Oracle Enterprise Manager vs Foglight for Databases

Compared 10% of the time

Redgate SQL Toolbelt Essentials vs Foglight for Databases

Compared 10% of the time

SQL Sentry vs Foglight for Databases

Compared 8% of the time

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Database Development and Management

December 2025

Download CA IDMS product report

Buyer's Guide

Foglight for Databases

January 2026

Download Foglight for Databases product report

Also Known As

IDMS

No data available

Overview

CA IDMS is a reliable, high-performance, web-enabled Database Management system (DBMS) for IBM z Systems that provides business value for hundreds of enterprises and government organizations. CA IDMS provides high-performance database management and transaction processing performance for existing and new workloads, helping you consolidate business functions on a central data repository, as needed.

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 IDMS vs. Foglight for Databases

December 2025

Free Report: CA IDMS vs. Foglight for Databases

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