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

"Dough Smith" <defense_dba_at_hotmail.com> wrote in message news:1e9296fb.0208310741.1f17d32e_at_posting.google.com...
> "jim" <jmmcda_at_mindspring.com> wrote in message
news:<qCob9.55462$Xa.2875480_at_twister.southeast.rr.com>...
> >

> Exactly! Nearly every speaker at every OOW and ODTUG I attend uses
> TOAD to some degree in their work. It's difficult for anyone such as
> Baker to stick his neck out is such a way when all the best of the
> best are using TOAD and advocating it's use for writing good Sql and
> debugging quality Pl/Sql. He is truly showing himself to be in the
> last herd of *SqlPlus/Notepad holdouts.

Don't wory, he's utterly atypical. I used to hear such crap years ago when I first began TOAD but it's died down to the semi-annual rant of desperation from people seeing their hard-earned skills being packaged up and placed under single button clicks. But they *all* convert eventually; not to TOAD but to some tool. They have to to remain as productive as those who do weild these tools and know how to use them. I'd love to go up against one of those guys trying to find a nasty performance problem in a database with them using Sql*Plus and me armed with TOAD and SpotLight. It would be like racing to put the siding on a barn and you're using a hammer while I'm using a nail-gun. Doh!

> But I just took a shot at your QuestSqlPlus and you have another
> winner on you hands. I run a lot of my script through it and it
> burped once and I'll send you that one (based on your rep, I can
> probably download the fix tomorrow).

QuestSqlPlus was released just this past week so I anticipate a long period of ERs. If you'll send that to my personal email address (or join the beta mailing list), you'll probably get a fix the next day. Most of this emulating Sql*Plus crap ain't rocket science so it shouldnt be difficult to track down. But because of that and the 1200 downloads just this week (with no advertising mind you -- all word of mouth), I am getting a lot of feedback and am updating the download about once a day. I put another late last night.

> There are still more bells and
> whistles you could incorporate but then you'd be duplicating TOAD

Precisely. I had wanted to move the script manager from TOAD into QSP (QuestSqlPlus) but it was way too much so I just placed a simple saved scripts recall list in there.

> But overall, a Sql*Plus killer. Unless I start finding my scripts
> choking on me, I'll stick with this one. It even picks up the TOAD
> freeware's editor fonts! Cool.

You caught that, eh? Not many have so far. If you install QSP over an existing TOAD installation -- free or not -- it picks up your keyboard shortcuts, syntax highlighting, AutoReplace, Code Templates, etc. :) The difference is that commercial TOAD has hooks within it to pull files from Source Control or select files from disk and execute them directly in QSP where as there are no such hooks in free TOAD. Note, these QSP hooks are only in the 7.4 TOAD beta.

> Are you guys gonna keep this one free?

I can give you a 99% positive yes. I'm intentionally avoiding any functionality extensions that would lead anyone in Irvine (Quest corporate) to start looking at QSP as a possible commercially viable product. I just wanted to get an easy and fast to download SqlPlus replacement out there. It was written to accompany commercial TOAD to execute scripts separate from the main TOAD thread but since it IS a stand alone executable, why not share it? Received on Sat Aug 31 2002 - 11:06:49 CDT