Two decades on one problem: making IRIS data visible

Most database tools are built outwards: start generic, add drivers, treat every system as a variation on the same theme. SQL DATA LENS was built the other way round — start with one platform's peculiarities and go deep. That is why it can show you the globals underneath a table, tell you which cached query has gone stale, and connect to a 2018 Caché server and a current IRIS instance in the same session without a driver conflict. Those are not features you arrive at by generalising.

It also explains what the product deliberately is not. It does not try to replace the Management Portal for administration, or VS Code for writing ObjectScript, or DBeaver for a shop with thirty different database systems. It is the data and diagnosis tool that sits alongside them. That boundary has been the same since the first concept document in 2014, and the comparison page is honest about where it puts us second.

How it got here

1. 2004

   A side project called Caché Monitor

   A faster way to run SQL against InterSystems Caché than the tools of the day allowed. It started because the author needed it, which is still the reason most of the features exist.

2. 2014

   A commercial edition

   Support requests had outgrown what a free side project could absorb. A paid edition was introduced to cover the cost and offer a defined service level — the free edition stayed.

3. 2021

   Caché Monitor becomes SQL DATA LENS

   Version 3.0 brought full InterSystems IRIS support and a name that no longer tied the product to a database generation that InterSystems itself had moved on from.

4. 2025

   Performance work and a new licensing system

   The SQL performance suite matured — index scanner, cached-query analysis, execution plans — and licensing moved to a system that no longer requires emailing files around.

5. 2026

   Part of Data Prudentia GmbH

   SQL DATA LENS is now developed and supported by Data Prudentia GmbH. Same developer, same focus, with a company behind the product and a roadmap that is written down. Current release: 3.24.

Who you are dealing with

What we are working on

The near-term work is unglamorous and deliberate: a reproducible build with continuous integration, an automated test suite around the connection and licensing layers, encrypted connections, and read-only markers for production servers. After that, the depth continues — navigation between a table and its global storage, decoded $HOROLOG and $LISTBUILD columns, global size analysis, class and routine diffs between servers.

A macOS build is on the roadmap. It is not available yet, and you will not find it claimed anywhere on this site until it is.

Get in touch

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