So a while ago we launched our Database Activity Monitoring product.  Only it is called Database Security Manager (see a screencast here), which leads me to discuss the difference between "monitoring" and "management".

Database activity monitoring is the common label for point solutions that aim to monitor privileged user activity on database management systems.  There are various approaches, but all aim to offer an alternative to monitoring through native audit (also called native logs).  The most popular approach - if you believe Mark Nicollet from Gartner (listen here) - is to use a host-based agent.  Our agent derives database activity by monitoring the requests sent to shared memory. 

Most host-based database security agents can do a lot more than "monitoring". For example, host-based agents can block/interrupt requests that meet certain criteria (such as requests from a certain origin, accessing a certain object, using a particular protocol, etc.).  It just didn't seem right to still refer to this new technology as "activity monitoring".  It is so much more!  As an industry, we have truly crossed a chasm and have not just turned data (shared memory requests) into actionable information (privileged user activity) but we are finally able to act and prevent security breaches from happening!