Re: Need suggestion on GUI Tools for Oracle: ToadSoft or SQL Navagator or others?

I second that opinion. We did a 6 month evaluation of PL/SQL development tools for a US phone monopoly back in '97. At the time, we chose SQL-Station from Platinum (since bought by CA). It was the most advanced as far as debugging was concerned and had some other really nice features. Unfortunately, the merger with CA really killed them. We haven't heard a peep from their development/product management team for over a year now. SQL Navigator has now equaled or surpassed that tool. However, 6 months ago I stumbled on TOAD as I was searching for a small, free client that would allow some lower level developers to occasionally browse an Oracle database, issue queries, saves results, code a procedure or two, etc. Since then I've found I do more and more of my own work in TOAD. It lacks a little Oracle 8 and 8i support and doesn't reverse engineer as well as SQL-Station, but other than that, I love it. Even the free version has tons of DBA-type (as well as pure developer) functions. So be careful if you extend it to everyone in your organization. By the way, the free version "expires" every month forcing you to download the latest version; if this is a pain for you get the commercial version from Quest. SQL Programming from Sylvain-Faust is probably the only other worthy competitior (and yes, I did not include Procedure Builder from Oracle on purpose).

We also have Embarcadero's DBArtisan and find it to be fantastic. I use it for any DBA-type stuff I need to do, like moving schemas from one DB to another. And our veteran DBA who came with a library of his own Unix scripts, has fallen in love with it and does most of his work inside DBArtisan now. Embarcadero also has their own SQL/pl/sql coding GUI tool, called RapidSQL, but I feel it has a little ways to go still to catch up to the tools mentioned above. However, you can get a nice price savings if you go with their suite that includes the DBArtisan, RapidSQL and ERStudio (fantastic data modeler -- even comes with a Java application generator) pieces.

best of luck,
bill c.

"H. John C. Hopkins" <hopkihc_at_earthlink.net> wrote in message news:w8Zx4.4503$u8.155262_at_newsread2.prod.itd.earthlink.net...
> Hi.
>
> If you're a developer: TOAD. It's not bad for DBA work either, although
> it's not ideal if you're looking after more than one server.
>
> But for development... it's fast and lean and does damn near everything
you
> want it to. And if it doesn't, toadman will probably add it. It has the
> best code editing environment for Oracle SQL and PL/SQL I've ever used.
>
> Snag the free version and give it a try, or if want all the features,
> download the commercial version trial. I live by it.
>
> If your work leans towards DBA activities, give DBArtisan a try. It, too,
> has a trial version (www.embarcadero.com).
>
> Hope this helps. Do you have any specific requirements?
>
> -John
>
> H. John C. Hopkins
> Gainesville, FL
>
> "Simon Templar" <sorry_at_guess.net> wrote in message
> news:8a9f4p$24k8$1_at_news.enteract.com...
> > I have been looking at ToadSoft or SQL Navagator both products of quest
> > software. If you have experience with either of these tools or have a
> > BETTER suggestion please email me. I would like both the good news and
> the
> > bad news with both products...thanks ahead of time...
> >
> > stemp1ar_at_yahoo.com
> >
> >
>
>
Received on Fri Mar 10 2000 - 15:33:39 CET