There are no disputes, Quest Toad for Oracle is the BEST, for a programmer, DBA in an enterprise environment. Toad comes with a high price TAG, which makes many organizations which are not software development oriented, however do minor scale development to fill the business gaps, against Oracle databases, to make compromises and thus silently supporting pirated copies in distribution.

We were using Oracle SQL developer from last many years as our scenarios were mostly restricted to custom development and the DBA activities were managed by the console interactions itself.

From last few days we started checking out Oracle’s latest build (Early build) of SQL developer 4.0 and the first impression is quite fascinating. The prerequisites are limited to JDK 7.x which is becoming standard deployment in almost all scenarios.

A quick note about installing JDK7. Do not install JRE 7 yet, your ERP R12 instance may note support it, or minimum in our case. Install JDK always in a folder without spaces, like C:\JDK, D:\JDK7 etc

You can download the archive for the early build from Oracle download repositories

(JDK is not included, however from the same page you can download the installer)

Unzip the Developer archive (.zip) file to a local folder. The initial run will prompt for JDK location, which you can point to.

What is New

According to Oracle, these are the few new features added with SQL Developer 4.0

Oracle SQL Developer

New Features in Release 4.0

• Database Performance Monitoring

  SQL Developer now provides a full interface for Oracle Database Enterprise Edition’s Diagnostic pack, including Automatic Database Diagnostic Monitor (ADDM), and Active Session History (ASH). Accessible from the DBA panel, users can also manage their snapshots, baselines, and baseline templates.

  

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  Find Database Object – Search

  The database search is completely redesigned. The new tree layout allows for searches on multiple schema, object type, identifier types and usages. A history of your searches will be stored for later access. Search results can be viewed in a separate Editor where multiple search results can be pinned and displayed.

• Command Line

  Command Line support has been extended to Reporting and to the Cart. You can run Reports and generate them into HTML format through the command line. The Cart  commands offer the ability to export objects and data. A set of predefined DDL generation options and data formats can be applied.

  

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  Cart

  The Cart has been greatly enhanced. You can create and work on multiple carts. The deployment of objects has been extended to give you more flexibility in selecting export DDL options and data formats. Export Object configurations can be saved and applied again. Compare Cart objects to another Cart or Connection with the Database Diff. Cart objects can also be copied with the Database Copy feature. Scripts are extended to include Before and After Data Load.

• Reports

  Creating reports has never been easier. The create new report dialog has a tree layout for ease of navigation. An Advanced Option is available to instantly create Child and Drill Down type reports. Chart based reports include more chart types and you can test reports from anywhere within the report editor. Charts can be previewed in design mode. An HTML Report can be generated for any report. Enhancements in Database Doc generation include better layout and support for multiple threads to improve performance.

  

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  UI Enhancements

  The new UI changes in 4.0 enhances the overall look and feel of SQL Developer. A popular request on the Feature Exchange, a window border color can be dynamically set for a database connection. Useability improvements can be seen with with the new floating Editor and Navigation windows.

• Data Modeler 4.0

  This version includes the new Data Modeler release 4.0. New features include 12c support for IDENTITY columns and masking of sensitive data with Redaction policy definitions at table and column level, create Transparent Sensitive Data Protection (TSDP) policies and associate it with sensitive types. See the full list of New Features here.

  

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  JDK 7 Support

  This release supports JDK 7 and above. Download JDK 7 here.

 

Startup

Welcome screen

You will be asked whether the previous configurations should be migrated, incase if you were using previous versions of Oracle SQL developer. “Yes” will help you to save certainly a great amount of time, recreating the connections

The major difference between SQL developer and Quest Toad you may notice will be the look and feel, while Toad has a clear crisp interface to work with, which looks like earlier versions of Microsoft Office, the total look and feel of Oracle SQL Developer scores many less points. If you are from a pure #Linux environment, there is a high possibility that such look and feel experiences will not affect you much. On the other hand, sorry, your beauty expectations may be compromised to a certain extend.

As the name goes, SQL developer is mainly targeting SQL/PLSQL developers, hence if you are going to compare apple to apple, there are high chances that you will find Quest Toad a better partner, especially if you want to deal with the DBA activities also from the same console.

Memory consumption footprints

Let us look at a major concern for most of us, the memory consumption. Until recent days, laptops/notebooks were mostly equipped with decent 4GB memory, which was more than enough to do your stuff. However, with the emergence of 64Bit operating systems like Windows 7 & 8 the requirement for more memory has significantly changed and the latest default has become a minimum of 8GB.

A session with just connection established, SQL developer consumes 700 and more memory, while Quest Toad consumes less than 90MB the maximum, which could draw a line of concern, unless you have plenty of memory to spare. Please check the images above

Other than the CPU & Memory demands, SQL developer provides almost all functionalities against populated data as in with Quest Toad.

Now, if you or your organization could afford to pay the high license fee Quest Toad demands,we will recommend Quest Toad as a primary choice as it comes with multiple flavors tailored for particular requirements like

1. SQL/PLSQL development
2. DBA Activities
3. Performance monitoring

while Oracle SQL Developer is absolutely free, provide almost 70-80% of Toad’s functionality for a developer, at a high memory, CPU consumption compromise.

If you have thoughts, concerns, suggestions towards this post, please post them to us in the comments section.

regards,

for Windows7bugs

admin