Hexagon is a big name in the market of industrial technology with more than 24K employees and over 25 years in business.
They market themselves as the global leader in digital reality products that help customers make the most of their data, regardless of their business sector, be it manufacturing, industry, public sector, or infrastructure.
Headquartered in Sweden, Hexagon spans 50 countries in total, and this story focuses on the Israel branch that is part of the company’s division Hexagon ALI (Asset Lifecycle Intelligence), whose IT department looked for ways to optimize their routine management of internal databases.
The challenges
It’s no secret that the resident IT department of the branch must make sure, among other things, that the internal IT infrastructure runs clockwork 24/7.
And when it grows in size and becomes more complex along the way, some processes must be optimized or even reinvented without losing momentum. That’s where IT managers must both face the accumulated challenges and reorganize their workflow.
Of course, in this situation, Hexagon’s IT team had a few challenges as well, and there was nothing unique about them. The team’s then-current tools for database management (centered around Oracle Database) were insufficient.
They had to perform lots of routine operations with data that were rather time-consuming, if performed manually. And unfortunately, they did have to perform a bulk of those manually, including data retrieval, editing, and synchronization.
The solution
The best fit for this case was a solution that would combine multiple tools for data management, preferably in a single application, with an interface that would not be convoluted, and would allow proceeding to daily tasks right away.
That’s where a search conducted by Vladimir Gorscov, the company’s IT manager, led him to dbForge Studio for Oracle. The immediate advantages offered by the Studio were noted as follows:
- The interface was easy on the eye and familiar-looking
- The features included PL/SQL code completion, means of automation, and a complete toolkit for data editing and migration
- The available documentation was clear, full, and promised to come in handy at the early stages of getting acquainted with the Studio
As Vladimir subsequently noted, “dbForge Studio for Oracle is the easiest tool to work with, it provides everything we require with efficiency and high performance. It saves us lots of time and makes the work with our Oracle databases very easy. The first month of use was enough to prove that it was a cost-effective choice.”
The results
Indeed, it was evident that the Studio performed well during the first month, giving a convenient 20% boost in productivity to Vladimir and his teammates.
It was a rather considerable boost given that—in spite of all the challenges—database management at Hexagon ALI had been tackled effectively. But the difference still felt good, and Vladimir pinpointed three main groups of features that helped achieve it.
Top features of the Studio singled out by the Hexagon ALI’s IT team
Smart PL/SQL code completion, formatting, and debugging
One of the main tasks of the team is querying data, and dbForge Studio for Oracle turned out to be a big helper here with its strong selection of coding assistance features, which comprise context-aware PL/SQL code completion, smart suggestions of database objects, formatting with a flexible set of options, a library of code snippets (both predefined and custom snippets are available), a query profiler that helps further optimize written queries, and a powerful PL/SQL debugger to boot. Taken together, it all sounds quite hefty, yet it’s all quite easy and fast in everyday use.
Easy editing and migration of Oracle databases
The full spectrum of database management tools is just too massive to be covered here, so it’s better to concentrate on the essentials: visualization of database structures on diagrams, comparison and synchronization of said structures and actual data, direct data editing in the grid, the ability to copy and migrate databases, export and import of Oracle data covering 14 most popular file formats, and, of course, extensive means of automation via the command-line interface.
Well-enhanced database administration
Finally, it would be plain wrong not to mention the administration capabilities of dbForge Studio, which include three key tools.
The first one, Security Manager, helps handle user accounts, including roles and privileges. The second one, Session Manager, allows tracking session statistics to minimize performance delays and downtime. The third one, Event Monitor, makes it easy to scrutinize server events.
