A Perfect 10 for Toad® 10 a Quick Tour Through the New and Improved Toad
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November 2009 A Perfect 10 for Toad® 10 A Quick Tour Through the New and Improved Toad By John Weathington After taking a test drive of Toad® for I’ve been involved in business Oracle version 10, I’m looking forward intelligence and data warehousing for to a nice boost in productivity. What I around 15 years now, a consultant for really like about Quest is that it truly close to 20, and a techie for as long as understands the role I play as a data I can remember. When I moved into expert and efficiency consultant. Since management consulting, I picked up a that understanding is coupled with a few more skills, but my main focus was John Weathington commitment to make the best tools for learning how to more effectively apply is President and CEO of Excellent Management Systems, Inc., a management consultancy that helps companies dramatically improve efficiency. He has more than 15 years of experience in business intelligence and data warehousing, and has consulted to Fortune 500 companies such as Cisco, Silicon Graphics, eBay and Sun Microsystems. He is an accomplished project Figure 1. Toad v10’s new database browser management professional data professionals, Quest’s products keep the skills I already had. After reviewing (PMP) and Six Sigma Black Belt. Recently, he getting better and better. I’d like to give Toad 10, I feel Quest has done the same helped a large technology you a brief review of what to expect in thing. Toad for Oracle is already fully firm fortify a $100 million this latest release of Toad for Oracle, functional, so instead of adding a slew government contract. and what I feel are the best productivity of new features, Quest stepped back For more information, boosters for you and your team of data in version 10 to create a product that please visit professionals. helps us get the most out of all this great www.johnweathington.com. functionality. Copyright 2009 John Weathington. All Rights Reserved. A Perfect 10 for Toad® 10 Page 2 This is both refreshing and exciting for especially in the emerging markets of The Answer is Closer than You Think: me. I recently wrote an article titled, Russia, India and China. Fortunately with New Integrated Search “The Value of Good Software: An Toad 10, this is no longer an issue. Speaking of Toad World, the new version Expert Evaluation of SQL Developer Toad 10 has full Unicode support for of Toad for Oracle has a very impressive and Toad Development Suite,” in which both the data and the database object search feature that enables you to search I compared Toad to Oracle’s SQL names. On the database side, a character this vast information repository right Developer. To research this article, I set that commonly supports Unicode from the comforts of your own Toad interviewed experts in the field to see functionality is UTF8. Interestingly, I application. A new search bar has been what they thought. Although Toad was believe Oracle has supported the UTF8 added to the Toad interface, which the unapproachable gold medalist in character set since version 7; however, it reminds me of the search bar on popular functionality, a consistent reverb that I was supported in only a limited fashion. browsers that allows you to search picked up on in favor of SQL Developer With the release of Oracle 9i came full different sites based on a drop-down is that it was just cleaner and easier to (and reliable) support for UTF8, so this menu. In addition to Toad World, you use. That’s mainly a byproduct of being is where Toad drew the line: you can use can search Knowledge Xpert (a Quest less functional! Nonetheless, the makers Unicode functionality only in Toad with Software product option that contains a of Toad had a real usability challenge in Oracle version 9i or higher. Personally, I vast amount of information on the Oracle front of them. I think they recognized wouldn’t want to use Unicode characters database), AskToad (a wiki-based Toad this, and responded pretty well with in a version of Oracle earlier than 9i, so for Oracle knowledge portal), and of version 10. you should be okay. course the standard Toad help, all from Top Enhancements in Toad 10 one convenient search bar. Around the World with Toad 10: Unicode Support The first thing that caught my attention in version 10 was Unicode support. Unicode is a universal encoded character Figure 3. The new search bar provides a fast set that allows you to store and manage If you’re interested in learning more, I connection to several helpful resources data in any language. I don’t know about recommend going to Toad World For instance, from the Toad interface I could easily look up “tablespaces” in the Knowledge Xpert tool to learn anything and everything about Oracle tablespaces. Then, if I wanted to know how to Figure 2. Unicode support for object names manage tablespaces in Toad, I would do and data (www.toadworld.com), a community the same search but select “Toad Help” you, but this is a huge feature for me. for Toad-minded people and an online instead of “Knowledge Xpert” in the One of my current clients is a Fortune knowledge base for all things Toad. drop-down menu. Finally, if I wanted to 500 e-commerce company. I’m helping Among many other things, Toad World get some answers to a tough tablespace them grow their international business, has some great reference material on question from the Toad community of so I’m intimate with the challenges using Toad with Unicode features. experts, I’d do the same search with of localization and how important “Toad World” as my search option. Unicode support is for any tool that data professionals are trying to use abroad, Copyright 2009 John Weathington. All Rights Reserved. A Perfect 10 for Toad® 10 Page 3 data grids, but the new ones add some really nice features that will make your life a little easier. The one big thing that stands out for me is that now you can select any rectangular area within your data grid (instead of being forced to select the whole data grid, or only certain rows). This allows you to copy just a portion of your data results to the clipboard and then paste it into a spreadsheet or any other tool. You can also show and hide columns much more easily now using a quick- select drop-down menu at the top left of the data grid. When you click it, all of the columns in your data set are Figure 4. Toad World search results displayed in a menu, with a check box Even the built-in Toad help has been A Remodeled Home for Your Data: next to each column. Simply check or enhanced in version 10. It’s much more Improved Data Grids un-check a column in this menu to show connected and integrated with the Toad Another very nice update was one or hide that column in your result set. World community on the Internet. made to Toad for Oracle’s data grids. This is a much quicker and easier method Now, when you perform a search on This update applies to any data that’s than in earlier versions of Toad. certain topics, you will occasionally presented in a grid, from the results of a Finally, I like the grouping feature, which be presented with a hyperlink to short SQL query to the connection box. There makes it easy to organize your data set videos on Toad World called “Coffee wasn’t much wrong with the previous by simply dragging a column header up Break Bytes.” to a grouping area, similar to the way you can organize your mail in popular e-mail readers today. Any number of columns can be further sub-grouped. There’s also a nice feature that tells you the number of rows that belong to each group. In Consideration of the Nomads: Roaming Profiles and Citrix Installations For those of you who like to (or need to) roam, Toad now allows you to specify the location of Toad settings and application data. This is very useful Figure 5. The new data grid showing customizable column headers, column grouping and sub- for data professionals that work in an grouping as well as sub-totaling of records Copyright 2009 John Weathington. All Rights Reserved. A Perfect 10 for Toad® 10 Page 4 environment with roaming profiles and warehouse project, we had only a short few more categories and grouped them Citrix installations. window to get the initial data load done. more logically in version 10 to make Things were so slow that we weren’t going them easier to find. And even if you aren’t working in to make it. Using Toad’s session browser, Database Monitoring a virtual setup, it seems like that’s I was able to quickly locate a renegade Enhancements the way the industry is going. As session that had kicked off without companies struggle with optimizing anybody (including my client’s DBAs) Health check isn’t the only thing hardware resources in a challenging knowing about it. I notified the DBAs and that’s been updated for the DBAs; economy, Citrix server farms seem they killed the process immediately. As a Toad also has a very nice collection of to be an increasingly popular option result, our loads completed well within the enhancements that work together for against everyone having their own allotted window.