Databases app
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The Dynatrace 
Databases enables you to monitor, analyze, and optimize database environments with clarity and control. It offers detailed insights into performance, health, and configuration, helping you identify issues early and maintain reliable operations.
By integrating with Dynatrace observability ecosystem, Databases connects database metrics with application and infrastructure data, supporting faster troubleshooting and smarter decision-making.
Prerequisites
Before you begin, ensure the following:
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ActiveGate configuration
- Assign one or more ActiveGate group to connect to the target database servers remotely.
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Required components
- For databases requiring additional components (for example, JDBC drivers), install them on all designated ActiveGates according to the extension guidelines.
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Network and permissions
- Validate network connectivity and firewall rules for each database type. ActiveGate should be able to establish a direct network connection to the database host.
- Create a monitoring user account with appropriate permissions (for example, access to system views, performance metrics, and schemas).
Permissions
The following table describes the required permissions.
Installation steps
- Install Databases from the Dynatrace Hub.
- Configure the app to monitor supported database instances. For vendor-specific setup instructions, see Get started with database monitoring.
- Add the required monitoring configurations (for example, credentials, endpoints) for each instance.
Get started
Use Databases to monitor, analyze, and optimize your database environments. The app integrates with the Dynatrace observability ecosystem and delivers actionable insights to help you ensure reliability, improve performance, and reduce downtime.
Databases app overview
Centralized dashboard
The Overview tab provides a high-level summary of your database landscape:
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Database health: Visualize healthy and unhealthy database instances to identify problem areas quickly.
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Host metrics: Access data from hosts running OneAgent for deeper analysis of resource dependencies.
Explore database instances
Select the Explorer tab to view a list of all your monitored instances. The Database instances table displays these instances.
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Health: Unified statuses and Davis-detected problems help you quickly identify critical issues.
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Utilization: Metrics such as CPU usage, memory consumption, user calls, and active sessions provide insights into resource efficiency.
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Host details: Drill down into host metrics or access the Infrastructure and Operations view for a comprehensive analysis.
Entity details panel
For an overview of a single instance, do one of the following:
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Go to the Explorer tab and select the instance name in the Database instances table.
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In the rightmost column, select the (Statement performance) icon.
From here, you can access the Entity details panel and analyze all the metrics collected by the extension.
Statement performance analysis
Analyze resource-intensive queries to optimize performance:
- Filter queries by time, CPU, disk, or wait metrics.
- Access execution plans to understand query interactions and identify optimization opportunities.
Statement performance
If the extension provides related information, you can display Statement performance analysis to track the performance of statements that consume the most resources.
To focus your analysis:
- Set the Filter statements to a search string.
- Set Contextual analysis to the context of predefined metrics (Time, CPU, Disk, or Waits), or select the column settings icon to customize columns and adapt the context to your needs.
- Select the Request execution plan to understand how the database executes the statement for optimization.
Advanced features
The app helps you proactively address potential issues before they affect operations, reduce downtime, and improve reliability.
- Detect and resolve anomalies that use AI-powered analysis.
- Pinpoint root causes of performance degradation or failures.
- Receive actionable recommendations for query and configuration optimizations.
Benefits
Databases helps you maintain reliable, efficient, and optimized database operations. The app addresses issues proactively and provides actionable insights, allowing you to focus on strategic priorities.
- Minimize downtime: Detect and resolve issues before they impact operations.
- Improve performance: Optimize queries, schemas, and configurations for better efficiency.
- Ensure reliability: Support stable database operations across diverse environments.
- Enhance productivity: Automate observability tasks and reduce manual troubleshooting.
Concepts
Health score
A predefined, non-configurable metric evaluates availability, performance, configuration, and resource usage.
Health alerts and warning signals
Health alerts and warning signals help you monitor your infrastructure by providing clear, actionable insights. These features reduce the noise from infrastructure issues and improve alerting capabilities, so you can focus on what matters most. This is achieved through better categorization of detected malfunctions.
- For critical events, a Health alert is raised, triggering a Dynatrace Problems investigation.
- For non-critical situations, a Warning signal informs you of a potential challenge.
You can set up the ready-made health alerts and warning signals through the Alert templates tab.
In the Alert templates tab, we provide pre-defined alert templates for the most popular DB vendors. Easily create a new alert by selecting a template and New Alert. Next, either customize the alert in the Anomaly Detection wizard or create the alert with one step.
Find all the custom alerts, more details of capabilities, and limits in Anomaly Detection.
Insights
Insights highlight patterns, anomalies, and trends based on built-in domain expertise. They go beyond raw metrics to surface meaningful findings such as performance degradation, resource bottlenecks, and violations of best practices. These insights help you focus on what matters most and take informed, corrective actions quickly.
Deployment flexibility
Databases supports diverse deployment models:
- On-premises: Monitor traditional database setups.
- Cloud: Gain visibility into cloud-hosted databases (for example, AWS RDS).
- Hybrid: Ensure consistent observability across mixed environments.
Use cases
Understand database health
Databases provides a real-time overview of your database's health. The app continuously evaluates key metrics to provide a health score that reflects the current state of your database environment. This health score helps you quickly identify areas that might require attention.
- Tracks performance indicators such as query execution times, resource utilization, and connection issues.
- Highlights anomalies and potential risks affecting database reliability.
Analyze and optimize query performance
Queries are often the root cause of database inefficiencies. The app provides tools to analyze query execution and identify areas for improvement. This ensures that your databases can handle workloads effectively.
- Detects slow or inefficient queries that impact database performance.
- Provides recommendations for query optimizations, such as rewriting queries or adding indexes to improve performance.
- Offers detailed execution plans to help you understand how queries interact with your database.
Detect and resolve database issues
Databases helps you address problems before they affect your database operations. The app uses Dynatrace AI capabilities to identify issues, analyze their root causes, and suggest actionable solutions.
- Detects anomalies in database behavior using AI-powered analysis.
- Pinpoints root causes of performance degradation or failures.
- Recommends remediation steps, such as configuration changes or query optimizations, based on actionable insights.
Integrate with Dynatrace for end-to-end observability
Databases is part of the Dynatrace ecosystem and provides comprehensive observability across your entire technology stack. The app integrates with other Dynatrace tools to provide a unified view of your database and its dependencies.
- Grail: Processes large volumes of data for scalable analytics.
- Smartscape: Maps real-time dependencies for context-aware analysis.
- Davis AI: Detects anomalies and provides intelligent recommendations.
Databases documentation overview
Databases