Path: dp-news.maxwell.syr.edu!spool.maxwell.syr.edu!drn.maxwell.syr.edu!news.maxwell.syr.edu!newsfeed.stanford.edu!sn-xit-03!sn-xit-09!sn-xit-08!sn-post-01!supernews.com!corp.supernews.com!not-for-mail From: DA Morgan Newsgroups: comp.databases.oracle.tools Subject: Re: Quick and dirty query tool Date: Fri, 03 Dec 2004 18:14:24 -0800 Organization: Ye 'Ol Disorganized NNTPCache groupie Message-ID: <1102126363.950167@yasure> User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7.2) Gecko/20040804 Netscape/7.2 (ax) X-Accept-Language: en-us, en MIME-Version: 1.0 References: In-Reply-To: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Cache-Post-Path: yasure!unknown@oracle.advtechserv.com X-Cache: nntpcache 2.4.0b5 (see http://www.nntpcache.org/) X-Complaints-To: abuse@supernews.com Lines: 51 Xref: dp-news.maxwell.syr.edu comp.databases.oracle.tools:66890 WQ wrote: > Hello Folks, > > I was wondering if anyone can suggest a good but not too expensive Visual > Query Tool, which will make do the following: > 1. Build my joins by drag and drop columns between tables > 2. Build my output clause by double clicking on displayed column list > 3. Support native oracle functions like decode, nvl etc. (See more on this > later). > > Okay, there are perhaps a lot of tools out there. I myself have evaluated a > few and most of them were very expensive compared to my minimal needs. Two > of them, which I frequently use are Microsoft Access and PL/SQL Query > Reporter by All Round Automation. > > Here are the Pros and Cons: > > 1. MS Access > Pros: > Extremely Fast because, when you link the table using an ODBC DSN, it caches > the data dictionery. This makes joing tables very fast. > Cons: > Does not support native Oracle functions like Decode, NVL etc. The SQL, > which comes out is not formatted properly. You will et dizzy by the number > of parenthesis it generates. Uses ODBC connections only vs ADO. > > 2. PL/SQL Query Reporter > Pros: > Creates nicely formatted queries. > Cons: > Everything else is bad about this tool. It is slow, because it queries the > DDL at the time of joining tables. Stores queries in a proprietary format, > making it virtually unusable, if you were to switch tools. > > I am currently evaluating Advanced Query Tool and DB Kwik Edit. > > I would appreciate any input you can provide on this subject. > > Regards. > > Walt. Use Oracle Discover or Business Objects Crystal Reports. Other options ... Brio and Cognos. Access is incapable of much Oracle functionality and is a pig. -- Daniel A. Morgan University of Washington damorgan@x.washington.edu (replace 'x' with 'u' to respond)