What We're Working On for DPM (Updated: August 2, 2022)

solarwinds_worldwide_llc over 2 years ago 4 minute read time

Your comments and feedback are always welcome and have been vital in shaping SolarWinds^® Database Performance Monitor (DPM) into the product it is today. We’re always listening, so please forward your feature requests, problems, and use case stories. Here’s a partial list of the things we’re currently working on:

Query Search Improvement: (Profiler/Explorer/Query Page)
- Advanced Search—Option to choose simple/advanced search for query text in profiler/query page.
- Compound filters—Filter tags using AND/OR (Boolean logic) for different tags in the Profiler tag filter option.
Display License Usage per Environment: Visibility into the number of licenses used per environment in the "Licences" section.
Transaction Monitoring: Capture transactions and detect the most time-consuming ones.

See and vote on all features here: Database Performance Monitor Feature Requests

Recent Feature Enhancements

June 2022

Off-Host Query Tags for MySQL: Ability to capture and visualize monitoring data and metrics related to query tags in an off-host agent deployment for MySQL.
Visual Explain Plans for Postgres and MySQL: For the Postgres and MySQL databases you’re monitoring, explain plans can be rendered graphically in DPM, and you can see the visual explain plan for any Postgres and MySQL query with samples. To view, click on a dot indicating a query sample to view the sample. Scroll down to see the explain plan and click “Visual View.” This will open the plan in a new tab in your browser.

March 2022

Host Filter Improvements: Host filters in DPM allow you to select a set of hosts and database instances to which various actions you perform in the DPM web application apply. We made two enhancements to this feature.

Auto-remember and save the search mode: The host filter works in two search modes: “Select Host” and “Use Syntax.” DPM automatically remembers the most recently used search mode per user per session with this feature enhancement. This means the last used search mode is automatically selected when a user logs out, logs in, or changes different pages in the DPM web application.
“Select All” option in the “Select Host” search mode: This enhancement allows users to select all matching hosts using a single click with the new “Select All” button in the “Select Host” search mode.

H2 2021

Support AWS/IAM “AssumeRoleWithWebIdentity”: While monitoring databases on AWS or AWS RDS, use service accounts to give IAM permissions, which require the underlying application SDK to pick up the AWS_ROLEARN and access key of the file system to receive temporary creds. This negates the need for an IAM user to exist and dramatically increases the security posture of the product.
Salesforce chat for support: Intercom chat is replaced with Salesforce. This allows users to chat with active support agents for any query or issues while using the product. If agents aren’t active, users can email the SolarWinds support team.
Auto-completion for tags in host filter: Hosts can optionally be tagged with custom labels from the “Hosts List” page. Once tagged, you can match all hosts with a given tag using the #tagname syntax. Tags can’t contain spaces or commas, but otherwise, just about anything can be used for a tag name. For more information on applying tags to hosts, click here.

H1 2021

Customization: Chart information can be visualized in different ways on the configured chart type. Four types are available: line, stream, stack, and 100%-stack. To change the type for a custom chart, edit the chart and add “type=” in the chart configuration from the dashboard. More info.
More flexibility in deployment: DPM now uses Windows agents for Windows hosts and works with databases running on the Windows platform. These databases can be monitored to capture host-level metrics as well as database metrics and query samples like other agents. More info.
Better integration capabilities: DPM can monitor AWS DocumentDB clusters remotely from an EC2 instance in your VPN. Amazon doesn’t provide off-host monitoring solutions for DocumentDB clusters that would normally be available in a Mongo cluster, so we use a combination of CloudWatch metrics and traffic mirroring sessions to monitor the cluster. More info.
Easier UI navigation: User experience improved with redesigned navigation.
Microsoft Teams webhook: By integrating DPM with Microsoft Teams, you can send alerts from DPM to a Microsoft Teams channel. More info.
Query annotations: Users of your DPM instance can leave comments and notes on any query’s detail page. No special permissions are needed. More info.
Okta group provisioning: With group provisioning, you can push groups from Okta to DPM. After you create a group in Okta and add users to it, you can push the group to DPM. Any Okta groups pushed to DPM will be set up as a team in DPM. You don’t need to have already created the team in DPM. The default assigned role for DPM teams pushed from Okta is read-only. You can then modify the team’s roles from DPM. More info.
Visual explain plans for SQL Server: For the SQL Server databases you’re monitoring, explain plans can be rendered graphically in DPM, and you can see the visual explain plan for any SQL Server query with samples. To view, click on a dot indicating a query sample to view the sample. Scroll down to see the explain plan and click “Visual View.” This will open the plan in a new tab in your browser. More info.
Wait time for SQL Server: For SQL Server databases, wait time data is available in the profiler and explorer as its own column of data for applicable queries. Using the host filter at the top of the screen, add the filter “type=mssql” to show only SQL Server databases to quickly find relevant queries. You can also rank queries in the profiler and explorer by wait time. More info.
Runnning DPM agent as a non-privileged user: Run DPM agents using non-root credentials. More info.