1. The Blackboard Academic
SuiteTM and Quest Software
Monitor and Diagnose
Database Performance Issues
of Your High-performance
e-Learning Applications
Blackboard Performance Engineering

2. BLACKBOARD PERFORMANCE ENGINEERING
Academic IT professionals who work with the Blackboard Academic Suite™ spend a great deal of time
maintaining control over their deployment environments due to constant change. The Blackboard Academic
Suite is an enterprise application supporting several deployment environments running Microsoft® Windows®
operating systems with a Microsoft SQL Server™ database or Red Hat® Enterprise Linux® and Sun Solaris™
operating systems running with an Oracle® database. There are many factors that impact the environment
including hardware upgrades and maintenance, software upgrades and service packs, as well as changes in
adoption and growth. The database and its underlying code are at the core of your Blackboard Academic
Suite solution. The assignment of managing an enterprise database can be daunting to database and system
administrators alike.
A primary function of a database administrator is to maintain the health and stability of the database,
ensuring optimum efficiency and performance while managing the impact of database changes. Database
administrators are responsible for:
• Installing and configuring databases
• Maintaining the database—managing back-ups, extending data files and storage, adding and removing
database users, auditing, and reviewing the database for security problems
• Ensuring the performance of the environment and keeping database response times within required service
levels
• Installing new software, service packs and patches specifically for the database and testing these installations
before deploying to production
• Imposing standards and procedures for data storage and growth
• Acting as a liaison to systems administrators, analysts, and programmers to add new applications or upgrades
to the database
Quest Software’s Spotlight® discovers performance bottlenecks in your database environment both in real-
time and historically. Spotlight is extremely flexible and capable of providing performance diagnostics on
the Oracle, Oracle RAC and SQL Server database platforms, as well as DB2, Sybase and MySQL. Spotlight
cuts through the complexity of the database environment and graphically portrays the performance status
for administrators, enabling familiarity with the environment regardless of experience level. Spotlight
automatically sets a baseline of normal activity for each database environment and calibrates its displays
accordingly. You can also set thresholds and alarms relative to these baselines. Blackboard’s Performance
Engineering and Architecture team uses Spotlight in house daily, including Spotlight on Oracle, Spotlight on
Oracle RAC and Spotlight on SQL Server.
The responsibilities of database administrators are becoming more and more diversified with the addition
of technologies to the IT business unit. Business-critical databases include more than just Oracle with the
expansion of Oracle RAC and the rapid growth of Microsoft SQL Server in the production environment. Each
of these environments comes with its own specific performance concerns, which can be overwhelming without
the proper tools to quickly diagnose performance issues and empower administrators to bring issues to
resolution with minimal impact on service levels.
For the Oracle environment, Spotlight on Oracle:
• Provides a visual representation of process flows within Oracle instances, allowing observation of database
activity in real time.
• Displays all important information in one place, including actual database and operating system activity.
• Allows historical playback of Oracle performance to understand and troubleshoot past performance issues.
• Visually identifies bottlenecks and provides extensive drill-down capabilities to understand the root of a
performance issue.
• Increases the effectiveness of staff with expert help delivered with the product.
• Enables you to see all critical database components on one screen.
• Displays the details of problem areas including top sessions, inefficient SQL, locks, latches, wait events and disk I/O.
• Measures the performance and efficiency of ASM (Automatic Storage Management).
• Provides detailed performance metrics and alarming for Oracle performance issues.

3. BLACKBOARD PERFORMANCE ENGINEERING
Oracle databases existing in a Real Application Cluster environment offer another layer of complexity to
monitoring performance of the database by including cluster-related performance concerns. Spotlight on
Oracle RAC removes this layer of complexity.
Spotlight on Oracle RAC provides all the functionality of Spotlight on Oracle, as well as additional
functionality specifically for RAC:
• Provides a visual representation of process flows within Real Application Clusters, allowing observation of
activity in real time.
• Displays everything important in one place, including actual database and operating system activity on each node.
• Diagnoses RAC performance from three key perspectives:
o Individual node
o Cluster as a single database
o Interconnect load, latency and overhead
• Visually identifies bottlenecks and provides extensive drill-down capabilities to understand the root of a
performance issue.
• Increases the effectiveness of staff with expert help for RAC that’s delivered with the product.
• Enables you to see all critical RAC components on one screen.
• Provides an historical record of performance of the cluster for analysis and playback of past performance
problems.
• Provides detailed performance metrics and customized alarming for RAC environments.

4. BLACKBOARD PERFORMANCE ENGINEERING
In the Microsoft SQL Server environment, Spotlight on SQL Server facilitates the discovery, diagnosis and
resolution of SQL Server-related performance issues in single SQL Server database environments, as well as
clustered, enterprise-level environments.
Spotlight on SQL Server helps database administrators:
• View and trace all sessions in a single interface.
• See performance of critical IT components at a glance – Spotlight shows both database and operating system
activity.
• Improve responsiveness to potential bottlenecks with real-time alerts.
• Simplify database management tasks by eliminating the need to write diagnostic SQL scripts.
• Monitor performance of multiple SQL Server databases simultaneously.
• Promote the experience levels of staff through a built in expert knowledge base.
Quest Software’s Spotlight enables you to meet the demands of managing and growing the Blackboard
Academic Suite database environment by providing the ability to diagnose and resolve performance issues
occurring both in real-time and historically. Spotlight also offers the flexibility of performing these tasks on all
major database platforms, allowing administrators to be immediately productive regardless of their platform
expertise.
About Blackboard Performance Engineering
The Blackboard Performance Engineering group partners with clients and vendors to test, validate, and report
on the efficiency, scalability, and resiliency of Blackboard products. Blackboard Performance Engineering
applies proven methodologies to generate accurate and reliable data about all the products in the Blackboard
Academic Suite, including the Blackboard Learning System—Vista Enterprise Edition and the Blackboard
Learning System—CE Enterprise and Basic Editions. Blackboard Performance Engineering applies the
data from its studies to generate optimal enterprise-class solutions for a variety of academic computing
environments.
About the Blackboard Academic Suite
The Blackboard Academic Suite is a leading enterprise software and services solution that enables dramatic
improvements in student achievement. Blackboard software is used daily by Administrators, Faculty and
students on campuses around the world. The Blackboard Academic Suite includes several applications that
help institutions transform learning and reach new audiences including the Blackboard Learning System,
Blackboard Content System, Blackboard Community System, and the Blackboard Outcomes System.
Blackboard, the Blackboard logo, Blackboard Academic Suite, Blackboard Learning System, Blackboard Learning System—Vista Enterprise Edition, Blackboard Learn-
ing System—CE Enterprise Edition, Blackboard Learning System—CE Basic Edition, Blackboard Community System, Blackboard Outcomes System, are either registered
trademarks or trademarks of Blackboard Inc. in the United States and/or other countries. Quest and Quest Spotlight are either registered trademarks or trademarks of
Quest Software in the United States and/or other countries. Microsoft, Windows, and Microsoft SQL Server are registered trademarks of Microsoft Corporation in the
United States and/or other countries. Sun, Solaris, and Java are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Sun Microsystems, Inc. in the United States and/or other
countries. Oracle is a registered trademark of Oracle Corporation in the United States and/or other countries. Red Hat is a registered trademark of Red Hat, Inc. in the
United States and/or other countries. Linux is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds in the United States and/or other countries. Apache is a trademark of The Apache
Software Foundation in the United States and/or other countries. Other product and company names mentioned herein may be the trademarks of their respective
owners. U.S. Patent No. 6,988,138. Patents pending.
© 2007 Blackboard Inc. All rights reserved. Made and printed in the USA.