You've come to this page because you've asked a question similar to the following:
What tools for DNS diagnosis can I use (instead of nslookup) ?
This is the Frequently Given Answer to that question.
Most DNS server softwares (with the exception of Microsoft's) come with DNS diagnosis tools in the package.
Dan Bernstein's djbdns package comprises dnsq, dnsqr, and dnstrace for DNS diagnosis.
For looking DNS information it also has dnsname, dnsip, dnsmx, and dnstxt. (Although note that several of these tools do not handle erroneous situations in the most robust manner. The response parser in dnsip, for example, is fragile and doesn't deal at all well with unusual or erroneous responses.)
Other people supply additional DNS diagnosis tools for use with djbdns, such as dnsqrx.
An up-to-date version of the djbdns tools is available in the djbwares toolset.
This also includes dnsqrx and dnsnamex; and the various general-purpose query tools implement human-readable forms of more resource record types, including printing AAAA resource records in the actual human-readable IPv6 form.
The djbwares toolset also includes a host command that is a rough workalike for the similarly named tools that are supplied with ISC's BIND and supplied with KnotDNS.
The Internet Utilities for OS/2 has dnsqry, dnsgeta, dnsgetns, dnsgetmx, dnsgetd, and dnsgetz for DNS diagnosis.
The ISC's BIND has host, dnsquery, and dig for DNS diagnosis. (Note that some operating systems are supplied with their own tool named host which often does not perform the same thing as the ISC tool by that name.)
KnotDNS has khost and kdig which are rough workalikes for the similarly named tools supplied with ISC's BIND.
LDNS has drill which is a workalike for dig from supplied with ISC's BIND, except that it lacks dig's range of command-line options, has no short mode (its authors explicitly stating one of its features to be producing more output than dig does), and has a sloppy command-line argument parser that just blithely ignores usage errors.
Microsoft's DNS server doesn't come with any better tools than nslookup.
Alas! Microsoft, foolishly, doesn't provide in its DNS server package for Windows any query tool other than a port to Win32 of nslookup. (No. ping is not an appropriate tool for querying DNS servers.)
If you use Microsoft Windows, you'll have obtain and use the tools from another package, such as (for examples)