Try our new research platform with insights from 80,000+ expert users

IDERA ER/Studio vs Quest Foglight for Databases vs SQL Sentry comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

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

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2025, in the Database Development and Management category, the mindshare of IDERA ER/Studio is 3.1%, up from 2.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Quest Foglight for Databases is 8.0%, up from 7.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SQL Sentry is 5.8%, up from 5.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Database Development and Management
 

Featured Reviews

Aaron Cutshall - PeerSpot reviewer
Used for data modeling and has a scripting language to write your own scripts
The solution has streamlined our data modeling processes quite a bit. It's a central focus in our data modeling and data cataloging efforts. The tool's reverse engineering capability to bring in existing database structures and create models from them has benefitted our data architecture needs. With the tool's data dictionary capability, we're able to maintain consistency in our models, name use, and actual data domains. The solution's reverse engineering helps with understanding legacy databases. In fact, I've been asked to reverse-engineer several more legacy databases so that we can have them modeled and cataloged. The solution is deployed on the cloud server, but it’s only within our network. The solution has a lot of capabilities. I like the fact that it has a scripting language that allows you to automate and write your own scripts. I think that's been a big bonus for us. I highly recommend the solution because of its capability for logical models, where you can put your business definitions and logic. While less expensive, some other tools can't do that. Overall, I rate the solution an eight out of ten.
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.
SM
Lets you know when your jobs are taking longer than average and allows you to go back in history and find out what was happening at certain times
To be able to go back in history and find out what was happening at certain times is the most valuable feature of the product. Another thing that's good about the product is that it will let you know when your jobs are taking longer than average so that you can foretell that there's going to be an issue coming up. Your SQL agent job is taking longer.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"I would 100% recommend the product."
"We have been able to quickly create models for our enterprise-wide databases, even when some of them are third-party databases."
"I like the fact that it has a scripting language that allows you to automate and write your own scripts."
"The most valuable feature of the solution is generating DDL (data definition language)."
"The reverse engineering is the most important feature."
"When validating the model, the ability to provide sub-models to developers, and generate a physical model from the logical, makes it easier to review a logical model with stakeholders."
"We have a database design group of about 15 people. The Repository enables multiple people to work on the same model at the same time. We have fully integrated models, so we have one model for the enterprise data warehouse, one model for MDM, with a lot of sub-models in these things. People work on different parts of the model at different times. So the repository enables us to share the models, and keep track of what everybody is working on."
"My overall rating for the solution is ten out of ten."
"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."
"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."
"We went from basically 30% coverage of our production environment to 100% coverage."
"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."
"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."
"We can visualize all the different types of DB servers that we are monitoring in a single pane of glass. It uses a 360-degree overview of the database, for each of those databases that we are monitoring. That includes what kind of resource utilization is happening and what kind of DB parameters are getting monitored, as well as the different types of DB parameters that are being offered for each database type."
"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."
"This solution has identified blocking, deadlock, memory pressure, and high CPU consumption issues."
"To be able to go back in history and find out what was happening at certain times is the most valuable feature of the product."
 

Cons

"We did have a big issue when we upgraded to the 2016 version. The Team Server portion never did quite install correctly, and/or the database was corrupted, and we never figured it out."
"I would like to see better documentation/help for the Data Architect tool. Creation of tutorials would be nice, as there are some features which are not as clearly defined as they should be."
"when there are some links to the external databases, if this database is not structured it is not uploaded. It gives me errors and I cannot see the view that was created on this structure and I cannot change those views, even manually. It skips the views. I have to ignore those views. I cannot re-upload them because it gives me an error."
"There was no specific mention of areas needing improvement."
"I'd like the ability to debug the errors ourselves instead of having to call them. There are certain types of errors that, I wouldn't say they come up regularly, but when you have an error it is very often the same type of error. Knowing that it's a Type III or Type I, it would be nice to have some kind of debugging facility for us to use to find out where the problem that threw that error occurs. That would be a really cool feature."
"The solution's reporting could be improved because the report writer is terrible."
"It would be helpful if they could create a generic JSON database type, as a target database, rather than a specific one like Mongo."
"ER/Studio lacks a pure cloud option for deployment."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"It would be amazing if they could enable the 'Performance Investigator' functionality across all database platforms."
"If we can get details on wait types from system views, it will help identify a more detailed root cause."
"There could be some more metrics on the high availability to let us know when there are issues synchronizing between the hosts."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It is priced fairly. It's around the same as erwin and other competitors' costs."
"The process of licensing could be much simpler, from our experience."
"The solution’s pricing is high."
"On a scale of one to ten, where one is bad and ten is good, I would rate the licensing cost as a seven or eight. It's not too expensive for us."
"I feel the product's pricing is a good value."
"The product is pricey."
"As an individual user, the renewal is a little costly."
"Pricing is on point, but do your due diligence - not every developer needs the tool."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"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 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."
"It's fairly expensive."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Database Development and Management solutions are best for your needs.
860,632 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
17%
Energy/Utilities Company
10%
Computer Software Company
9%
Government
8%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Computer Software Company
12%
Government
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Computer Software Company
14%
Healthcare Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Government
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for IDERA ER Studio?
In terms of pricing, ER/Studio is slightly more expensive compared to Erwin, by about five to ten percent.
What is your primary use case for IDERA ER Studio?
I have been working with data modeling tools. Personally, I have been working with Erwin for many years now. ER/Studi...
What advice do you have for others considering IDERA ER Studio?
I would strongly recommend ER/Studio for large teams. Erwin is a very stable product, but for smaller teams, it's oka...
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. ...
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 HA...
Ask a question
Earn 20 points
 

Also Known As

IDERA ER Studio, ER/Studio, ER/Studio Enterprise Team Edition
No data available
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Newmont Mining, Entrust, Accolade, TalkTalk, Catalina, Protective Life, NTT Data, dir systèmes, Microsoft; American Express, Astellas Pharma, AstraZeneca, Coriant, Fedex, GlaxoSmithKline, PepsiCo, Prudential, Wells Fargo
CommitDBA
Coeo, Stack Overflow, GreatAmerica Financial Services Corporation, Hawaiian Airlines, Hennepin County Medical Center, Racing Victoria, Citrix, Insight, Shi, Woodforest National Bank, Telular
Find out what your peers are saying about Oracle, Quest Software, Nutanix and others in Database Development and Management. Updated: June 2025.
860,632 professionals have used our research since 2012.