Re: Your comments on AA's PL/SQL Developer

From: Andrew Hardy <nobody_at_spam.from.news.AdvanticaTech.com>
Date: Wed, 21 Nov 2001 09:47:10 -0000
Message-ID: <9tft84$4qj$1_at_sun-cc204.lut.ac.uk>


[Quoted] I've been trying out the trial version and quite like it. However, I'm puzzled by some of the 'features/bugs' - my main gripes are:

  1. Reading a SQL file containing a complete package definition doesn't work - the '/' gets raised as an error and the resulting package is corrupt. This is especially annoying as this even occurs on files saved from the developer itself!
  2. Package editor sometimes dies if you right click on a function and choose 'Select' - I get 'List index out of bounds'.
  3. The Objects browser sometimes incorrectly displays objects as being invalid.
  4. It took a long time to find our how to stop 'smart' tab function i.e. the indentation of lines according to the position of the second word on the previous line. E.G. a line whose preceding line started 'IF X' will have an indentation to line up with 'X' which is 3 spaces. If the preceding line had been 'THEN X', the indentation would be 5 spaces. This wouldn't be so bad, except that the editor doesn't remember these varying indentations when you try to get back to the previous indentation level. Yuck!
  5. The VCS plug-in seems very shaky. The menu items are often greyed out for no apparent reason, re-opening the project *may* allow you to check-in and check-out. Check-out with 'Open files in IDE' doesn't actually bring the correct file/package into the IDE - which given the problems with reading SQL files might be a blessing!
  6. Block indentation can only be done by pressing a button, it's much more intuitive to use tab and shift-tab ala PLedit.

However, I do quite like the integration of the editing, SQL and test windows. The browsing of schema objects is pretty quick and it's very easy to query table data. The easy access to the profiler is excellent. The editor is pretty good, I like the shift-rightclick to get the definition of code. The listing of objects within the editor is good, but would be better if it could cope with nested functions and procedures. I've not used the debugger, perhaps this would be the clincher for me.

On the whole, I'm not sure! I feel that I'm still fighting the interface. I'll give it a few more days.

Andy Received on Wed Nov 21 2001 - 10:47:10 CET

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