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The SQL Server Magazine Editors' Best awards honor the outstanding products and services that our editors and contributors have seen over the past year.
After narrowing down all the possibilities to the top contenders in 12 categories, we polled our fellow editors and contributors and asked them to judge each product on three criteria. First, what is the product’s strategic importance to the market? Second, does it offer superlative performance and technical innovation? And finally, does it provide an impressive price-performance ratio that makes it a compelling value? After weeks of debating, arguing, and cajoling, we came up with our list of winners, and we’re proud to unveil our Editors' Best awards for 2008.
These products can help you create, manage, deploy, optimize, recover, and otherwise squeeze the most out of your SQL Server environment. They’re easily the best products that we’ve yet seen in the SQL Server ecosystem.
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| Product of the Year |
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Quad-Core Intel Xeon Processor 5400 Series • Intel www.Intel.com
Few products have the ability to turn an industry on its ear, but that’s exactly what Intel has done with the Quad-Core Xeon Processor 5400 Series. Massive database servers and the sprawling data-driven applications that depend on them can bring puny single- and dual-core processors to their wobbly, silicon knees. AMD, Intel’s primary rival, put forth a competing solution that suffered from production delays and setbacks, leaving Intel as the clear market leader in this burgeoning high-end segment of the CPU market. The benchmark-crushing performance that Intel's Quad-Core CPUs provide can result in huge cost savings for DBAs tasked with squeezing maximum performance out of enormous (and enormously complex) databases. |
| Breakthrough Product |
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Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 • Microsoft www.microsoft.com
Although lots of media attention has been focused on the release of Windows Server 2008 and SQL Server 2008, Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 had the distinction of hitting the market first. The latest version of Microsoft’s ubiquitous IDE offers dozens of improvements and features for programmers, including .NET Framework improvements, support for updated versions of C# and Visual Basic, and an updated version of Microsoft Foundation Classes (MFC 9.0). |
| Special Achievement |
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Microsoft System Center Data Protection Manager 2007 • Microsoft www.microsoft.com
With Microsoft System Center Data Protection Manager 2007, SQL Server data protection takes a great leap forward. Because DPM 2007 is integrated with SQL Server, DBAs can use a native Microsoft product to perform database backup and restore and protect a range of server systems under a common framework. Administrators no longer need to turn to one solution for long-term archiving, another for rapid recovery, and a yet a third for offsite backup and restore. |
| Security, Auditing, and Compliance Winners |
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Gold: |
SecureSphere Database Security Gateway • Imperva www.Imperva.com
SecureSphere Database Security Gateway gives you complete visibility and control over your database applications by providing automated database activity monitoring, auditing, and compliance capabilities. |
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Silver: |
SQLsecure • Idera www.Idera.com
SQLsecure provides a complete view of the security of your SQL Server instances and lets you easily analyze user and group permissions and create custom policies to monitor compliance with security standards. |
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Bronze: |
ApexSQL Log • ApexSQL www.apexsql.com
In addition to letting you easily audit SQL Server database and transaction log files for changes, ApexSQL Log can recover lost and modified data. |
| Backup and Recovery Winners |
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Gold: |
SQL Backup
• Red Gate Software www.redgate.com
SQL Backup delivers market-leading compression, encryption, and monitoring of SQL Server backups, making them fast, simple, and secure |
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Silver: |
SQLsafe • Idera www.idera.com
The latest version of Idera SQLsafe provides a classic UI and high-speed backups that can be as much as 50 percent faster than native backups. |
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Bronze: |
LiteSpeed for SQL Server • Quest Software www.quest.com
Quest’s LiteSpeed for SQL Server helps companies reduce reliance on tape and provides fast backups with a small, low-impact footprint. |
| Business Intelligence and Reporting Winners |
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Gold: |
Crystal Reports 2008
• Business Objects www.businessobjects.com
The industry leader has come through again with a comprehensive package that extends the ease of use of its enterprise-class, cross-platform reporting solution to end users. |
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Silver: |
Tableau • Tableau Software www.Tableau.com
Tableau 3.0's ease of use lets users of varying technical abilities analyze and monitor data simply by dragging and dropping fields to create dashboards. |
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Bronze: |
Stimulsoft Reports.Net 2008.1 • Stimulsoft www.Stimulsoft.com
Stimulsoft Reports.Net 2008 is a high-end tool for developers who need to generate reports in Microsoft .NET. The 2008.1 version includes new Gantt and scatter charts, enhances report exporting, and adds functionality to the report engine. |
| Database Management Winners |
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Gold: |
SQL mobile manager • Idera www.idera.com
SQL mobile manager's use of mobile management technology offers the potential for nimble troubleshooting and improved response time, helping DBAs reduce database downtime and ensure that small events don’t escalate into large ones. |
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Silver: |
Change Director for SQL Server • Quest Software www.quest.com
Change Director’s Change Tracker and Log Reader components are particularly well conceived. Change Tracker offers real-time alerts about database changes, and Log Reader provides an easy-to-use way to roll back unwanted changes. |
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Bronze: |
SQL Sentry Event Manager • SQL Sentry www.sqlsentry.net
SQL Sentry Event Manager lets DBAs see, understand, and manage SQL Server efficiently. Its unique cross-system job scheduling and monitoring capabilities make it a stand-out in the market. |
| Database Monitoring and Performance Winners |
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Gold: |
SQL diagnostic manager • Idera www.idera.com
SQL diagnostic manager lets you easily monitor and manage the health, performance, and availability of your SQL Server instances. |
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Silver: |
Spotlight on SQL Server Enterprise • Quest Software www.quest.com
Spotlight on SQL Server Enterprise not only offers real-time performance metrics that let you easily find and diagnose performance problems—it also lets you automate problem resolution. |
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Bronze: |
Embarcadero Performance Center • Embarcadero www.embarcadero.com
With Embarcadero Performance Center, you can monitor your databases from any computer that has Internet access, and its customizable alert thresholds and historical reporting help keep your SQL Server instances running at maximum performance. |
| Development Platform Winners |
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Gold: |
XMLSpy 2008 • Altova www.altova.com
XML has become a core infrastructure technology for many companies and products. Altova XMLSpy is the leading XML development platform and earns the gold in our development platform category. |
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Silver: |
InstallShield 2008 Premier • Acresso Software www.acresso.com
All but the simplest applications need an installation routine, and most software vendors choose InstallShield as their tool. The new release supports the latest Microsoft technologies, including .NET 3.0, Windows Installer 3.0, SQL Server 2005, and Windows Vista. |
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Bronze: |
JBuilder 2008 Enterprise • CodeGear www.codegear.com
Recently acquired by Embarcadero, JBuilder 2008 offers all the capabilities you’ve come to expect from Microsoft Visual Studio—except it’s for Java. If you need a Java development platform, JBuilder is hard to beat. |
| Development Tools Winners |
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Gold: |
NetAdvantage for .NET • Infragistics www.infragistics.com
NetAdvantage is more than just a collection of controls; it provides a framework in which all the included components share similar object models and a common architecture. |
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Silver: |
ComponentOne Studio Enterprise • ComponentSource www.componentone.com
For those who need to develop .NET apps in a hurry, ComponentOne Studio Enterprise is a good place to start. If you can’t find the component you need in this product bundle, you probably didn’t need it in the first place. |
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Bronze: |
Dundas Chart for .NET
• Dundas Data Visualization
www.dundas.com
Dundas Chart for .NET is not only one of the easiest to use .NET charting solutions on the market, but also one of the fastest. Combine that with a competitive price and stellar product support, and you have a winner. |
| Hardware Winners |
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Gold: |
HP ProLiant DL580 G5 • HP www.hp.com
HP’s ProLiant servers have always been performance workhorses, but the HP DL580 G5's Quad-Core Xeon processor is an evolutionary step forward, with particular enticements for SQL Server admins. |
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Silver: |
Dell/Microsoft Business Intelligence Data Warehouse &• Dell and Microsoft www.dell.com
This is a marriage made in heaven for SQL Server administrators: Dell rolled out a line of servers preconfigured with SQL Server, easing installation woes and providing top-notch performance. |
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Bronze: |
Dell PowerVault MD3000i • Dell www.dell.com
The MD3000i iSCSI SAN array gives you deployment flexibility and simple sharing across multiple servers. Busy database admins will appreciate the product’s user-friendly UI, helpful wizards, and easy operation. |
| Storage Winners |
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Gold: |
RamSan-500 • Texas Memory Systems www.texmemsys.com
The RamSan-500 makes the jump into SSD technology, providing the most storage capacity for the best price. The RamSan-500 provides up to 2TB of storage, with as many as 100,000 I/O operations per second (IOPS) sustained random reads, |
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Silver: |
PS5000E • Dell www.equallogic.com
The PS5000E provides cost-effective capacity, large scalability, and optimal performance for common business applications. |
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Bronze: |
E-Disk Altima ATA-133 • BiTMICRO Networks www.bitmicro.com
The E-Disk Altima ATA-133 offers huge storage capacities in a standard disk drive form factor. |
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