Productivity Tools

SQL Self Service

Let your IT support teams execute their SQLs, securely, without sharing passwords.

SQL Self Service is a productivity tool of Clonetab which helps to convert the execution of SQL scripts to Self Service. Non-DBA IT Support teams (Business support, Development teams, etc.) will be able to run their SQLs themselves on databases like Oracle, MySQL, MS-SQL, SAP HANA etc., through a Self-Service portal. Clonetab’s SQL Self Service (CTS3) tool drastically reduces the wait times on DBAs for SQLs execution through an approval workflow.

Eliminate wait times between teams

• Frequent delays between teams can be avoided through self service of SQLs execution

Reduce DBA tickets

• Reduce tickets to DBA team to enable DBAs to work on more complex tasks • Improves productivity of both DBA and support teams

Improved compliance and SQLs history

• MS AD integrated access control • Approval workflow • History of SQLs execution with output

Customer case study

Customer is a global leader in management consulting with presence in more than 60 countries.

Industry: Consulting
Environment: ERP: Oracle e-Business Suite, Oracle Databases on AIX, RAC, ASM, multi-node.

Business Challenges:

Provide a solution where IT support teams can run their SQLs without any dependency on the DBA team but without access to passwords and in a compliant and secure method.
Since users do not have access to most of the passwords of production databases and non-production, they need to approach the DBA team through service-related tickets for executing SQLs scripts. Users need to wait till the DBA team executes all the tickets available in his/her queue and many times this gets delayed due to other ongoing tasks in the DBA team. Many times execution of these SQLs is a top priority especially during month-end and year-end closing.

For implementing Clonetab’s SQL Self Service product, below were the needs that need to be addressed.

Approval/Rejection workflow through emails (to allow the approver to act on requests on the go.)
Microsoft Active Directory integration is a must as there are about 300 registered users who will use this product.
There should be a way to provide blanket approvals (pre-approved) for certain SQLs where arguments can change but actual SQL will not. These are useful especially during routines like Month/Year end closings.
Validate the SQLs through preview mode.
Approver should know what he is approving. Also, send the completion results to requester, approver, etc.

Summary

Clonetab’s SQL Self Service helped the customer to

⦁ Eliminate wait times between teams.
⦁ Reduce DBA tickets drastically.
⦁ Improved compliance and productivity.

Clonetab’s SQL Self-Service implementation addressed all above requirements.

By eliminating the wait times, productivity drastically improved in IT business support & Development organizations. On the other hand, it helped to reduce the time spent by DBAs on routine mundane tasks and allowed them to work on more important tasks.

All the SQL executions were done in a secure and compliant way. The RUN SQL button is allowed only when all the necessary approvals were obtained. An audit trail is maintained for every request. This also helped in future reference (e.g. user can check how many rows were updated in the past for the same SQL).

CTS3 also provides features to download the output in PDF/CSV formats which will make it easy to validate the execution after execution of SQLs (Which is also sent through emails after execution).

The independent tasks can be executed parallelly and can get approval from the approvers all at a time. Once the tasks got approved the users can submit multiple tasks parallelly. At times, it will become difficult for the users to create and get approval for the same script with multiple input parameters. For those kinds of scripts, there is an option called pre-approved scripts where there is an approval given by the approvers and is available on CTS3 server. User can run the script as soon as he/she created the task without waiting for the approval. This helps in saving the approval time thus improves productivity

There is no restriction for the script length to be uploaded for the tool like other applications. For the approvers, for approving the task no need to login to the UI where he needs to login to the organization’s VPN. Instead, requests can be approved through email. The user requests are end-to-end encrypted with HTTPS configuration making it highly secured.

Productivity Tools

• Let your IT support teams execute their SQLs – SQL Self Service

• Secure Password Wallet - CTVault