Dell Upgrades Toad Database Tools

Dell Software unveiled a series of database tool upgrades this week aimed at easing the management of data across a variety of platforms.

Dell promotes its Toad database tool family as agnostic toward data and data management. The updates are designed to simplify the automation of development operations while whipping data into shape for analysis and reporting. The upgrades also are intended to provide greater flexibility in choosing a database platform.

The company said the upgrades come in response to growing complexity as more data and more data sources are dumped into databases. Toad “is evolving beyond its roots as a set of tools for the individual database professional into a portfolio for teams and organizations to manage all data as an asset for their business,” Darin Bartik, Dell Software’s executive director of information management products, noted in a statement released on Tuesday (June 23).

Along with Oracle and other relational databases, the Toad upgrades add support for new platforms, including Hadoop, MongoDB and SAP HANA. Bartik added that the upgrades also seek to push Toad tools beyond database platforms to streamline the processes used to integrate and analyze data from a variety of sources.

Among the new tools is a Data Point offering designed to improve data preparation through data cleansing, aggregation and data sharing as a way to promote integration and analytics efforts. The “cleanse engine” adds data profiling capabilities, new transformation rules and more horsepower to process larger data sets. It is also intended to simplify data aggregation and visualization.

The tool upgrade also integrates Toad Intelligence Central with Dell’s Boomi integrator and it Statistica analytics platform. The combination is designed to prepare and analyze multiple data sets from- and off-premise sources. Toad Intelligence Central also runs with Dell’s other data management tools along with third-party visualization vendors like Microsoft, Qlik and Tableau.

Dell Software announced a partnership in April with Datawatch Corp. that integrates visualization and other analytics capabilities into its Statistica analytics platform.

Along with the Datawatch partnership, Dell Software said it upgraded Statistica through development of its big data analytics module (formerly known as Kitenga) as well as through integration with Toad and Boomi.

The integrations upgraded Statistica with a broader data connectivity layer that is touted as enabling users to connect to more than 164 data sources either on-premises and in the cloud. Those sources range from traditional systems such as Oracle, Microsoft SQL Server and MySQL to MongoDB and Hadoop.

Moving beyond relational database support, Toad will also support SAP HANA along with boosting capabilities for running IBM DB2 and Hadoop distributions. The expanded support means users could manage databases such as SAP HANA and SAP Sybase using the same Toad interface and tool set.

Dell Software said this week that its Toad database tool upgrades are available immediately with pricing starting at $595 per user. Dell’s database management tools are sold direct or through channel partners.

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