Skip to main content

SolarWinds Offers Free DBA xPress Tool

SolarWinds announced its SolarWinds DBA xPress product is now available as a free tool.

For data professionals who need to understand how a data environment is visually structured, DBA xPress intuitively helps compare, synchronize, script, and navigate data and schemas, enabling data pros to more seamlessly adopt DataOps, automate releases and simplify Microsoft® SQL Server®cloud migrations at no cost.

Implementation is the biggest barrier to greater DataOps adoption. Respondents reported a lack of proper training/education/tooling (44%) and a lack of resources/budget (44%) as the leading challenges to implementing DataOps, followed closely by difficulty securing buy-in from business leadership (33%).

As more organizations seek the benefits of DataOps strategies, it’ll be imperative in the near term to deliver value through data. DBA xPress will help tech pros tackle this head on—for free—and help them move one step closer to implementing a successful DataOps strategy.

“As digital transformation continues to accelerate across industries, we’re seeing more businesses start to prioritize their move to the cloud. But as teams—especially database managers—start to break down cloud migration requirements, it quickly becomes apparent how time-consuming and costly it can be,” said Rohini Kasturi, CPO, SolarWinds. “To succeed in migrating from one environment to another, teams need to optimize their data to maximize the performance of cloud-hosted databases and adopt solutions that enable DataOps practices to drive efficiency and productivity. We’re hoping to kickstart and simplify this optimization process for DBAs, DevOps teams, tech pros, and business leaders alike by offering DBA xPress for free.”

DBA xPress helps data teams understand schema and data differences and data dependencies as part of the database re-architecture process when preparing for Microsoft SQL Servercloud migrations. Data pros need to manage moving code and data from on-premises to cloud environments—especially in an organization’s change management pipeline from application development to production—and the ability to automatically compare data and schemas ensure successful migrations.

DBA xPress highlights include the ability to:

- Compare databases and synchronize the schema and data within them

- Automate schema and data synchronization via command line interface (CLI)

- Analyze dependencies and connections among tables, users, functions, and security policies

- Browse the content of SQL Server databases, access the scripts for each object, and export them

The Latest

In the world of digital-first business, there is no tolerance for service outages. Businesses know that outages are the quickest way to lose money and customers. For smaller organizations, unplanned downtime could even force the business to close ... A new study from PagerDuty, The State of AI-First Operations, reveals that companies actively incorporating AI into operations now view operational resilience as a growth driver rather than a cost center. But how are they achieving it? ...

In live financial environments, capital markets software cannot pause for rebuilds. New capabilities are introduced as stacked technology layers to meet evolving demands while systems remain active, data keeps moving, and controls stay intact. AI is no exception, and its opportunities are significant: accelerated decision cycles, compressed manual workflows, and more effective operations across complex environments. The constraint isn't the models themselves, but the architectural environments they enter ...

Like most digital transformation shifts, organizations often prioritize productivity and leave security and observability to keep pace. This usually translates to both the mass implementation of new technology and fragmented monitoring and observability (M&O) tooling. In the era of AI and varied cloud architecture, a disparate observability function can be dangerous. IT teams will lack a complete picture of their IT environment, making it harder to diagnose issues while slowing down mean time to resolve (MTTR). In fact, according to recent data from the SolarWinds State of Monitoring & Observability Report, 77% of IT personnel said the lack of visibility across their on-prem and cloud architecture was an issue ...

In MEAN TIME TO INSIGHT Episode 23, Shamus McGillicuddy, VP of Research, Network Infrastructure and Operations, at EMA discusses the NetOps labor shortage ... 

Technology management is evolving, and in turn, so is the scope of FinOps. The FinOps Foundation recently updated their mission statement from "advancing the people who manage the value of cloud" to "advancing the people who manage the value of technology." This seemingly small change solidifies a larger evolution: FinOps practitioners have organically expanded to be focused on more than just cloud cost optimization. Today, FinOps teams are largely — and quickly — expanding their job descriptions, evolving into a critical function for managing the full value of technology ...

Enterprises are under pressure to scale AI quickly. Yet despite considerable investment, adoption continues to stall. One of the most overlooked reasons is vendor sprawl ... In reality, no organization deliberately sets out to create sprawling vendor ecosystems. More often, complexity accumulates over time through well-intentioned initiatives, such as enterprise-wide digital transformation efforts, point solutions, or decentralized sourcing strategies ...

Nearly every conversation about AI eventually circles back to compute. GPUs dominate the headlines while cloud platforms compete for workloads and model benchmarks drive investment decisions. But underneath that noise, a quieter infrastructure challenge is taking shape. The real bottleneck in enterprise AI is not processing power, it is the ability to store, manage and retrieve the relentless volumes of data that AI systems generate, consume and multiply ...

The 2026 Observability Survey from Grafana Labs paints a vivid picture of an industry maturing fast, where AI is welcomed with careful conditions, SaaS economics are reshaping spending decisions, complexity remains a defining challenge, and open standards continue to underpin it all ...

The observability industry has an evolving relationship with AI. We're not skeptics, but it's clear that trust in AI must be earned ... In Grafana Labs' annual Observability Survey, 92% said they see real value in AI surfacing anomalies before they cause downtime. Another 91% endorsed AI for forecasting and root cause analysis. So while the demand is there, customers need it to be trustworthy, as the survey also found that the practitioners most enthusiastic about AI are also the most insistent on explainability ...

In the modern enterprise, the conversation around AI has moved past skepticism toward a stage of active adoption. According to our 2026 State of IT Trends Report: The Human Side of Autonomous AI, nearly 90% of IT professionals view AI as a net positive, and this optimism is well-founded. We are seeing agentic AI move beyond simple automation to actively streamlining complex data insights and eliminating the manual toil that has long hindered innovation. However, as we integrate these autonomous agents into our ecosystems, the fundamental DNA of the IT role is evolving ...

SolarWinds Offers Free DBA xPress Tool

SolarWinds announced its SolarWinds DBA xPress product is now available as a free tool.

For data professionals who need to understand how a data environment is visually structured, DBA xPress intuitively helps compare, synchronize, script, and navigate data and schemas, enabling data pros to more seamlessly adopt DataOps, automate releases and simplify Microsoft® SQL Server®cloud migrations at no cost.

Implementation is the biggest barrier to greater DataOps adoption. Respondents reported a lack of proper training/education/tooling (44%) and a lack of resources/budget (44%) as the leading challenges to implementing DataOps, followed closely by difficulty securing buy-in from business leadership (33%).

As more organizations seek the benefits of DataOps strategies, it’ll be imperative in the near term to deliver value through data. DBA xPress will help tech pros tackle this head on—for free—and help them move one step closer to implementing a successful DataOps strategy.

“As digital transformation continues to accelerate across industries, we’re seeing more businesses start to prioritize their move to the cloud. But as teams—especially database managers—start to break down cloud migration requirements, it quickly becomes apparent how time-consuming and costly it can be,” said Rohini Kasturi, CPO, SolarWinds. “To succeed in migrating from one environment to another, teams need to optimize their data to maximize the performance of cloud-hosted databases and adopt solutions that enable DataOps practices to drive efficiency and productivity. We’re hoping to kickstart and simplify this optimization process for DBAs, DevOps teams, tech pros, and business leaders alike by offering DBA xPress for free.”

DBA xPress helps data teams understand schema and data differences and data dependencies as part of the database re-architecture process when preparing for Microsoft SQL Servercloud migrations. Data pros need to manage moving code and data from on-premises to cloud environments—especially in an organization’s change management pipeline from application development to production—and the ability to automatically compare data and schemas ensure successful migrations.

DBA xPress highlights include the ability to:

- Compare databases and synchronize the schema and data within them

- Automate schema and data synchronization via command line interface (CLI)

- Analyze dependencies and connections among tables, users, functions, and security policies

- Browse the content of SQL Server databases, access the scripts for each object, and export them

The Latest

In the world of digital-first business, there is no tolerance for service outages. Businesses know that outages are the quickest way to lose money and customers. For smaller organizations, unplanned downtime could even force the business to close ... A new study from PagerDuty, The State of AI-First Operations, reveals that companies actively incorporating AI into operations now view operational resilience as a growth driver rather than a cost center. But how are they achieving it? ...

In live financial environments, capital markets software cannot pause for rebuilds. New capabilities are introduced as stacked technology layers to meet evolving demands while systems remain active, data keeps moving, and controls stay intact. AI is no exception, and its opportunities are significant: accelerated decision cycles, compressed manual workflows, and more effective operations across complex environments. The constraint isn't the models themselves, but the architectural environments they enter ...

Like most digital transformation shifts, organizations often prioritize productivity and leave security and observability to keep pace. This usually translates to both the mass implementation of new technology and fragmented monitoring and observability (M&O) tooling. In the era of AI and varied cloud architecture, a disparate observability function can be dangerous. IT teams will lack a complete picture of their IT environment, making it harder to diagnose issues while slowing down mean time to resolve (MTTR). In fact, according to recent data from the SolarWinds State of Monitoring & Observability Report, 77% of IT personnel said the lack of visibility across their on-prem and cloud architecture was an issue ...

In MEAN TIME TO INSIGHT Episode 23, Shamus McGillicuddy, VP of Research, Network Infrastructure and Operations, at EMA discusses the NetOps labor shortage ... 

Technology management is evolving, and in turn, so is the scope of FinOps. The FinOps Foundation recently updated their mission statement from "advancing the people who manage the value of cloud" to "advancing the people who manage the value of technology." This seemingly small change solidifies a larger evolution: FinOps practitioners have organically expanded to be focused on more than just cloud cost optimization. Today, FinOps teams are largely — and quickly — expanding their job descriptions, evolving into a critical function for managing the full value of technology ...

Enterprises are under pressure to scale AI quickly. Yet despite considerable investment, adoption continues to stall. One of the most overlooked reasons is vendor sprawl ... In reality, no organization deliberately sets out to create sprawling vendor ecosystems. More often, complexity accumulates over time through well-intentioned initiatives, such as enterprise-wide digital transformation efforts, point solutions, or decentralized sourcing strategies ...

Nearly every conversation about AI eventually circles back to compute. GPUs dominate the headlines while cloud platforms compete for workloads and model benchmarks drive investment decisions. But underneath that noise, a quieter infrastructure challenge is taking shape. The real bottleneck in enterprise AI is not processing power, it is the ability to store, manage and retrieve the relentless volumes of data that AI systems generate, consume and multiply ...

The 2026 Observability Survey from Grafana Labs paints a vivid picture of an industry maturing fast, where AI is welcomed with careful conditions, SaaS economics are reshaping spending decisions, complexity remains a defining challenge, and open standards continue to underpin it all ...

The observability industry has an evolving relationship with AI. We're not skeptics, but it's clear that trust in AI must be earned ... In Grafana Labs' annual Observability Survey, 92% said they see real value in AI surfacing anomalies before they cause downtime. Another 91% endorsed AI for forecasting and root cause analysis. So while the demand is there, customers need it to be trustworthy, as the survey also found that the practitioners most enthusiastic about AI are also the most insistent on explainability ...

In the modern enterprise, the conversation around AI has moved past skepticism toward a stage of active adoption. According to our 2026 State of IT Trends Report: The Human Side of Autonomous AI, nearly 90% of IT professionals view AI as a net positive, and this optimism is well-founded. We are seeing agentic AI move beyond simple automation to actively streamlining complex data insights and eliminating the manual toil that has long hindered innovation. However, as we integrate these autonomous agents into our ecosystems, the fundamental DNA of the IT role is evolving ...