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Foglight for Databases vs IDERA SQL Doctor comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Aug 19, 2025

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

Foglight for Databases
Ranking in Database Development and Management
3rd
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
14
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
IDERA SQL Doctor
Ranking in Database Development and Management
31st
Average Rating
8.0
Number of Reviews
1
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2025, in the Database Development and Management category, the mindshare of Foglight for Databases is 5.2%, down from 7.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IDERA SQL Doctor is 1.1%, up from 0.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Database Development and Management Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Foglight for Databases5.2%
IDERA SQL Doctor1.1%
Other93.7%
Database Development and Management
 

Featured Reviews

Stuart Dairiki - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
MR
By capturing performance issues when they happen, we do not miss crucial data
* Indexing and locking analyses * The ability to generate optimize scripts. * The prioritized recommendations are nice to have. Furthermore, you can have multiple scans archived when comparing the tracing from a baseline perspective. Two scans can give us insights concerning the difference between a good and a bad situation.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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."
"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."
"Its reporting capabilities are immense."
"Foglight is also able to help the DBAs proactively fix problems before they become an issue. It provides them with real-time activity screens that help in this regard. The DBAs are able to go to these screens and look at what's happening in real time, and that buys them time. It helps them see problems ahead of time and find solutions to them."
"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."
"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."
"You can have multiple scans archived when comparing the tracing from a baseline perspective. Two scans can give us insights concerning the difference between a good and a bad situation."
 

Cons

"When holding data for two years for 20 SQL Servers, the reporting becomes sluggish and unresponsive."
"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."
"It would be amazing if they could enable the "Performance Investigator" functionality across all database platforms."
"It would be amazing if they could enable the 'Performance Investigator' functionality across all database platforms."
"The monitoring capabilities for Postgres should be at par with SQL Server. This is the area where we push back on our Quest representative."
"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."
"One thing that I would like, and it's probably something that I could set up internally, is something other than a dashboard which I have to look at to know that a server is down. I'd like bells and whistles to go off... If I look at the dashboard I know there's a server down. But if I'm not looking at it, if I'm looking at some other problem, I want to know about it. You can do that, you can use SMSs and alerts to your phone, and I could set it up to handle that, but it would be nice if, out-of-the-box, Foglight did that."
"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."
"SQL Doctor should be improved in Availability Groups, mirroring, and clustering analyses. We mostly see index and query plan analyses. It should be broader than this."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Compared to the other tools on the market, Foglight is okay in terms of pricing and licensing."
"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."
"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."
"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
Financial Services Firm
12%
Government
11%
Computer Software Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
No data available
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business2
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise10
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

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.
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...
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.
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Overview

 

Sample Customers

CommitDBA
Lake IT; ArcelorMittal; Canadian Natural Resources; Capital One Financial; Comcast; Dollar General; Pfizer Inc.; SCANA; Tata Consultancy Services; United Technologies; Xerox; Boostability; Daycoval; Exelon Corporation; Methodist Hospitals of Dallas Inc.; A-Tex A/S; University of California, Irvine; American Career College; Region Hovedstaden; Wunderman; Johannesburg Stock Exchange; Almacenes Vidri, S.A. de C.V.; Indiana Weslyan University; Mizuho Securities; Isala Klinieken; National Metrology Institute of SA; Raja; KMD AS; Advantage Solutions; infusystem; Portafolio de Negocios S.A. de C.V. - DG; Liaison International; Novaccent; National Council of State Boards of Nursing; Applied Innovations; St. Helen & Knowsley NHS Trust; Xtra Lease LLC; Catharina Ziekenhuis; HF; Florida Housing Finance Corporation; Fiserv, Inc.; West Bend Mutual Insurance Company; CITY OF ST JOHNS; Government Employees Insurance Company; Arbella Insurance Group; Quarto Group Software Systems Inc.; City of Sioux Falls
Find out what your peers are saying about Nutanix, Oracle, Quest Software and others in Database Development and Management. Updated: September 2025.
867,676 professionals have used our research since 2012.