I've reviewed the
full edition of DBxtra 2005 in the past. Now it's time to take a quick look at this
special edition of the product. It's got all the features of the full product, except
for one key limitation: you can only connect it to a
FogBugz SQL Server database. Along with this, it comes along with queries,
reports, and charts specially designed for querying that data. This is very useful
- although the FogBugz schema is documented, the table and column names that it
uses are not always the most obvious things in the world. By predefining simpler
aliases for things, DBxtra for FogBugz makes it easier to find what you're looking
for in your FogBugz data.
Of course, the product also fills a void in FogBugz, which itself has no reporting
or charting capabilities at all. Without doing any work at all, you get a variety
of useful information here: trends in bug opening and closing rates, lists of active
cases by client, category, priority, person assigned to, and more, reports on hours
remaining, and so on. If you like FogBugz, but don't care for the default FogBugz
attitude that reporting is pernicious, then this product will fill a need for you.
The supplied reports and charts cover the major issues that most managers will want
to track, and because you've got full design-view access, it's easy to tweak them
if you want to change the look or colors or layout or whatever.
Although the product is locked down to work only with FogBugz, this is a licensing
restriction rather than a technical one. If you do decide that you like the DBxtra
way of doing things, it can be upgraded to the full version. In fact, the trial
download is the full version; you just follow the instructions to set up a special
FogBugz project, but you can play with all of the other features for 30 days while
you're deciding which level to license it at.