Let Toad for Oracle Master the Database

fact sheet

Vendor: Quest Software, Inc. (www.quest.com)

Vendor's Information:
About Toad for Oracle
About Quest Software

Learning the ins and outs of an enterprise database is not for the faint of heart. Database administrators, developers, and analysts are often asked to wear many hats, including the development of code, debugging, SQL tuning, managing database performance, and troubleshooting.

Becoming an expert in all of these roles can take a lifetime. That's why Quest Software's Toad for Oracle, a comprehensive database tool that helps with development and administration, has an active following of more than 1 million users.

"Oracle is a really complex and robust database," said Bert Scalzo, Database Domain Expert at Quest Software. That's why users count on Toad for Oracle to take care of the inner workings of the Oracle database and free up the user to perform the work they were hired to do.

There is an entire line of Toad for Oracle products available from Quest to help users with the database tasks their jobs require. For database developers, managers, and analysts, Toad for Oracle is the entry point into the product and contains the bulk of the product's features.

Toad for Oracle includes a PL/SQL and SQL debugging suite. There are built-in knowledge bases called Knowledge Xpert for PL/SQL and Knowledge Xpert for Oracle Administration.

Toad for Oracle also includes Toad for Data Analysts, which is a multi-platform tool built specifically for data-focused professionals who need direct access to data for querying and reporting. It allows users to connect to any data source in their organization, quickly query data and generate reports, and understand data relationships. Toad for Data Analysts can function as a lightweight business intelligence (BI) tool, which means users with basic BI needs don't have to devote a month to learning more complicated BI software.

The Project Manager feature in Toad for Oracle allows users to share project assets like templates, scripts, and code snippets, with other members of their team. Team Coding is a collaboration utility that works with Toad's editor to control code access. The AppDesigner feature in Toad for Oracle lets users record workflow steps and play them back later.

Toad for Oracle Professional is the next version in the Toad family. It's aimed at database developers and what Scalzo calls "hard-core database users." It adds the CodeXpert feature, which catches errors in code and produces Code Reviews that give users' code a quality and performance scorecard.

Toad for Oracle Professional also includes a data generator, which allows you to easily create multiple rows of data for one or more Oracle tables for development and test environments. There's also an Export File Browser, which simplifies the extraction of useful information, including objects and data from an Oracle export file, instead of having to import the entire file.

Toad for Oracle Xpert builds on the features of Toad for Oracle Professional. "With Toad for Oracle Professional we're trying to facilitate the persona of a developer who has written code and now wants to perfect it and make it more efficient," Scalzo said.

It does this by adding the Quest SQL Optimizer, which scans and analyzes SQL, and then identifies potential performance issues directly from running SQL statements, PL/SQL, or other source code. The Quest SQL Optimizer then explores every possible way of improving SQL performance and either proves that the user already has the best-performing SQL or provides users with the best-performing SQL alternative.

"It's not unusual to find 500 to 600 percent improvement and do it in 30 or 40 seconds," Scalzo said of the Quest SQL Optimizer. It can also make users into better coders because they learn from what it discovers about their code.

Toad Development Suite for Oracle leverages a wide range of Toad capabilities to ensure high-quality applications that meet user requirements and perform reliably under production conditions. Scalzo calls it a "benchmark factory" that will help developers create applications that will meet service level agreements (SLAs).

Toad Development Suite for Oracle takes advantage of CodeXpert, Quest Code Tester for Oracle, and Toad for Oracle Debugger to help users develop and optimize their code. It then helps users validate code using regression tests built during development that test code for performance and scalability and under production-like conditions with Benchmark Factory for Databases.

The Toad DBA Suite for Oracle aims to simplify the common database administration tasks and make DBAs more proactive in solving database-related performance issues before they impact the production environment. It includes all functionality in Toad for Oracle Xpert, the Toad DB Admin Module, Spotlight on Oracle Standard Edition, Toad Data Modeler, and Benchmark Factory for Databases (Oracle Edition). Together these tools help users administer databases, diagnose and resolve database performance issues, and manage database storage.

Also on the DBA side, Quest offers the Toad for Oracle DB Admin Module (formerly known as the Toad DBA Module). This module, which can be added to any version, helps users maintain the health and stability of their database so it can deliver the best possible efficiency and performance while minimizing the impact of changes to the database environment.

The DBA Admin Module not only automates administration and reporting tasks, but it also provides a workflow that allows users to easily transition from one task to another. It facilitates database administration tasks with a powerful browser-based view of performance information across multiple database instances, right down to the user session level.

The Toad for Oracle products cover Oracle versions 7 to 11. In fact, Toad is the only tools that supports back to Oracle 7. Even Oracle SQL Developer only supports back to version 9.

Many of the features and enhancements to the Toad for Oracle product are the result and its vibrant and active user community, which finds Toad indispensible when it comes to resolving any number of database issues.

"Toad is a Swiss Army knife with 10,000 blades in it," Scalzo said.