Re: Has anyone used the QuestSqlPlus Toad tool from Toadsoft?

Dough Smith wrote:
>
> But overall, a Sql*Plus killer. Unless I start finding my scripts
> choking on me, I'll stick with this one.

My 2 cents: TOAD is a good GUI tool. I like it for writing PL/SQL and occasionally poking around the data dictionary quickly without having to remember which V$ view holds the info I need. I really like the color-coordinated PL/SQL editor for easy code reading. When I want a GUI interface to Oracle, I usually fire up TOAD.

That said, I rarely use it. 9 times out of 10, I don't want or need a GUI interfacet to Oracle. In a large production environment, I don't find that a GUI client makes me any more efficient supporting databases than good old telnet/ssh, SQL*Plus, and vi. Most of the time I simply need to do a quick login, check an alert log, connect via SQL*Plus and run one or two queries. I find I'm more efficient without TOAD under these circumstances.

My take is that TOAD will probably never replace SQL*Plus in a large operational environment. Enhance, maybe. Replace/kill? No. SQL*Plus will never go away, just like vi will never go away. Why? Both are installed by default on every Unix system we have running Oracle, require no extra licensing, and both are *extremely* powerful tools in the right hands. I can walk into any Oracle on Unix installation and if I know SQL*Plus and vi, I can do anything I want. Anything. Think about it - how long have people been saying vi will go the way of the dinosaur? And yet, most of us still use it every single day.

Good GUI's do GUI things very well. TOAD is a very good GUI. But I wouldn't knock SQL*Plus as a command line interface. I think it is an excellent command line tool - the best there is. Calling it "SQL*Minus" because it can't do GUI tasks is an apples/oranges argument.

Regards,
Sean Received on Sat Aug 31 2002 - 11:43:24 CDT