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Quest Foglight for Databases vs Toad for Oracle comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 23, 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

Quest Foglight for Databases
Ranking in Database Development and Management
2nd
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
14
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Toad for Oracle
Ranking in Database Development and Management
4th
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
16
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the Database Development and Management category, the mindshare of Quest Foglight for Databases is 8.2%, up from 7.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Toad for Oracle is 5.6%, up from 5.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
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.
Joseph Jolly - PeerSpot reviewer
Highly stable solution and efficiently pinpoints specific areas with issues, which has saved us time troubleshooting.
I think one area is being able to use shortcuts, for example, being able to press F5 to run a query or having the ability to seamlessly copy and paste. Sometimes it works in some areas, but in others, it doesn't. Like when you copy, you find that it's blank and doesn't copy anything. So, there are some objects that do copy, and sometimes they don't. In additional features, I would like maybe one for the integration with the ticketing system. For example, if a ticket is raised to resolve an issue, there should be something that I can click on to update the ticket when I'm done.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The platform is very stable."
"We went from basically 30% coverage of our production environment to 100% coverage."
"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 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."
"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."
"Its reporting capabilities are immense."
"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 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."
"Simply the best GUI software for administration is the most valuable aspect for me."
"Toad has a lot of features that are very useful, fast, and well developed."
"The most valuable feature is the navigation within the UI, where you can right-click on an object in an SQL query and go right to it, versus going through all of the menus to find what you are looking for."
"The most valuable feature of Toad for Oracle is the fashion browser and the Schema browser. It is very complete."
"A quite simple feature that I have not encountered elsewhere is the "Make Code" feature. I can easily export a complex SQL statement to a programming language. This is a great timesaver as I do not have to type in all of the escape/concatenation characters just to create a SQL statement in C# or C++."
"I haven't seen any issues with scalability. We have about 1000 people on our IT team who use the solution."
"Oracle has advanced query optimization and tuning features that help improve the performance of SQL queries."
"Toad for Oracle has proven to be better than other tools since we have never experienced any crashes."
 

Cons

"The monitoring capabilities for Postgres should be at par with SQL Server. This is the area where we push back on our Quest representative."
"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. We want more insights into Postgres."
"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."
"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."
"I would like the rule development code to be made available so we don't always have to be referred to professional services for custom solutions. For example, if we want to exclude certain databases from a particular rule, we shouldn't have to go to support and to professional services for that solution. If the code and syntax were available, we have resources that could quickly turn something like that around."
"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."
"There should also be a better "cancel query" option as sometimes one cancels a query, but then it still might run for a long time, and then one has to crash Toad in order to cancel the query."
"Toad for Oracle could improve code completion, it is very slow."
"Improvement wise, for the user it should show the minimum features on the screen and not all the features. Toad has a lot of features, but most users will use only 5 or 10 based on their role. Nobody needs all the features, and they should provide the option to choose only the required features. Only minimum requirements should be enabled by default. When all the features are shown, the performance is not good; it loads slowly and has hundreds of popups and unnecessary questions."
"I'd like reporting to be more available. If it was a feature that was already installed, more people would take advantage of it."
"There could be a tool for automated SQL query functioning."
"Query optimization is still very resource-intensive."
"I would like to see an improvement in the performance because opening the browser and the editor should be faster."
"It would be beneficial if Toad for Oracle could incorporate OEM features, as having monitoring capabilities in the same interface would simplify workload and management tasks."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"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."
"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."
"In my opinion, this solution is a little expensive, but I understand that good programs cost more money."
"I would rate it six, where one is a low price, and ten is a high price."
"The pricing is okay, it's reasonable."
"The professional edition is about $1,000 AUD ($700 USD) and the developer version is about twice that much."
"The product's pricing is just right because if it were slightly higher, it would not have been as widely adopted as it currently is in our organization."
"My advice is to try to use the three-year maintenance agreement if possible."
"Toad for Oracle has a relatively high cost compared to other similar tools."
"There are paid and free-for-use versions of the product."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
14%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Government
8%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
21%
Government
12%
Computer Software Company
11%
University
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

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.
What do you like most about Toad for Oracle?
The product's most valuable features are UI and monitoring.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Toad for Oracle?
The licensing cost for Toad for Oracle is relatively high, with their license and DPA suite totaling around five thousand dollars.
What needs improvement with Toad for Oracle?
It would be beneficial if Toad for Oracle could incorporate OEM features, as having monitoring capabilities in the same interface would simplify workload and management tasks.
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

CommitDBA
intel, ebay, uber, mars, microsoft
Find out what your peers are saying about Quest Foglight for Databases vs. Toad for Oracle and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
845,589 professionals have used our research since 2012.