How many times have you investigated slow application performance to find it’s a database issue? Or had people tell you “the database was slow last week” and you have no way of retrospectively investigating it? Or pushed new code and inadvertently hindered your query performance?

SolarWinds is well-known to systems and network administrators worldwide for its rich suite of networking tools, but it offers similarly high-quality applications for database administration, security, help desk, cloud monitoring, and more.

For DBAs, SolarWinds Database Performance Monitor is the hero you need for your on-premises or cloud-hosted MySQL, MongoDB, PostgreSQL, Redis, and Amazon Aurora databases, to track real-time and historical performance.

With only a lightweight agent to install, you can drill into your queries from Database Performance Monitor’s Explorer interface, to investigate performance and the impact on the database and infrastructure. The app displays CPU utilisation alongside query data, helping you determine if queries are missing an index or taking longer to run than normal.

One feature iTWire especially enjoyed is the Profiler, which compares query execution performance against historic runs of the same query. Where this excels is revealing if new code has any unintended and unexpected ramifications on query performance—something you don’t ordinarily pick up in automated unit tests, which focus on the accuracy of the result instead of the time to get there.

In fact, having Database Performance Monitor record historical usage makes this a breeze, without needing to manually record your own speed test results.

There are many other pieces of information and use cases Database Performance Monitor exposes. You don’t need to be overwhelmed by these, however, since the dashboard is customisable to suit your needs. You can restrict the thousands of metrics collected to only display the ones important to your current needs.

Even more helpfully, it's not just about telling you numbers. Database Performance Monitor can also use the data it collects to provide personalised recommendations and ensure solid, reliable, ongoing performance. In turn, this can lead to reduced costs as you extract better value out of your infrastructure.

If your application's heart is an open-source or NoSQL database, you owe it to yourself and your users to try out SolarWinds Database Performance Monitor. It’s available as a commitment-free fully functional 14-day trial and pricing begins at US$2,840 after that. Start your free trial here.