A few weeks ago I wrote about how simply adjusting various virtualized infrastructure default settings that a database could perform up to 440% better. Of course “your mileage” will vary, but the key point is that taking the time to properly layer your virtual infrastructure settings can have substantial impacts – which are only...

Part 2: The Game of Mastermind

 

Software development is one heck of a serious job. It turns out, however, that there are several games you can play to improve the quality of code you write. This is the second of two blog entries that introduce you to two of my favorite brain development and training games: Set and Mastermind.

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Written by Rene Woody

This blog is a continuation of a series (view last blog on the Optimization Process) about the SQL optimization process in the Batch Optimizer and the Tuning Lab modules of Quest SQL Optimizer for Oracle. It covers how to limit the number...

If you have ever looked in the Toad data directory you were probably a little bit bewildered about all the stuff in there. This article will try to shed some light on what all the files in there are used for by the Toad application.

Last week I wrote about how simply adjusting various virtualized infrastructure default settings that a database could perform up to 440% better. Of course “your mileage” will vary, but the key point is that taking the time to properly layer your virtual infrastructure settings can have substantial impacts – which are only magnified...

From the first version of Toad we have always had some form of code completion (It was originally called Toad insight or something like that) but it has always been a fairly simple affair where you either got a list of columns in select statements or a long list of objects of many different types completely unaffected by the context in which you invoke the code completion.

Starting in 4.0 the code completion support...

In an application like Toad connection and transaction handling will invariant become a complicate affair. During the years we have been working on this we have tried to make it as intuitive as possible so that you usually don't have to think about it. However, in some cases you can still run into problems so this post will try to explain how we handle connections and transactions so that you can avoid the pitfalls.

Version numbers between the different components of the different products can be pretty confusing ever for us who work on it. Before 3.0 of the Core (The part of Toad that is shared between the products) each product had it's own release schedule and with that each had it's own release version of this. After release 3.0 we now try to coordinate releases between the different products (They are usually staggered with a few...

For the upcoming 4.1 release I have actually been able to spend quite a lot of time to reduce startup time in Toad and hopefully there should be a quite noticeable difference. One of the changes made is to make the initialization multithreaded so the improvement should be even more pronounced if you have more than one CPU core.

There are a couple of other things you can do yourself in both 4.1 and versions before that to reduce startup time if you are annoyed by it.

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We have a bunch of terms referring to different aspects of the Toad application internally and I thought I would share some with you because it's not that uncommon that it slips out in the Yahoo Boards when we talk about it so why not just go through them and explain them.

The documentation of what command line options are available on the Toad.exe is not necessarily that well covered in the documentation. True there is rarely any need to specify anything on it unless something goes wrong. I just thought I'd go through what is available.

First of all the format. Toad allows any parameters to be specified regardless of if it knows what they are or not because some plugins might want to read it later on unbeknown to the original startup code. All parameters are specified using this format.

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I recently took some time to look through the different releases we have made of Toad over the years since we started and just thought I would share it with you guys. I chose the Toad for SQL Server release because that was the one which had made the most releases (For instance Toad for DB2...

Every once in a while I've been writing Toad stuff on my personal blog and I figured it is time to stop doing that and try to do this blog into something a little bit more useful. Entries in this blog will also be cross posted on the site Toad Wrangling

I will try to write tips and tricks about how to use Toad as I can think of them.

I'm one of the original developers...

Part 1:  The Game of Set

 

Software development is one heck of a serious job. It turns out, however, that there are several games you can play to improve the quality of code you write. This is the first of two blog entries that introduce you to two of my favorite brain development and training games: Set and Mastermind.

 

Play either (preferably both) of these games, and you will write better software.

...

Many people swore that database on a virtual machine would not fly – or at best, would be accepted very, very slowly. I was not one of those people – so I wrote a new book on just that subject: Oracle on VMware: Expert tips for Database Virtualization. However I don’t expect people in these tough economic times to just go out and buy every...

Written by Rene Woody This blog is the beginning of a series that will cover the optimization process in the Batch Optimizer and the Tuning Lab modules of Quest SQL Optimizer for Oracle.

When writing a SQL statement, it is easy to be satisfied when you have figured out how to get the correct results. This is especially true when you are writing a complicated...

One of the highlights of Oracle Open World 2008 for me was the presentation by Bryn Llewellyn (PL/SQL Product Manager) on “Doing SQL in PL/SQL.”

 

Bryn surely has the most thorough and clear understanding of the PL/SQL language of anyone I have met (definitely including me).

 

His talk was detailed and precise (and maybe just a little bit overwhelming. He needed twice the time allotted) on this most important topic.

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We often spend a lot of time trumpeting the sexy little widgets in our database tools and overlook the little things that really aid in the development of our applications or even just writing the mundane queries that fill up our day.

I’d like to just spend a quick 10 minutes on letting you know about a cool little feature that Toad for Data Analysis offers for writing your queries in the editor. The technology is...

Control convergence – the effort of staying in compliance while reducing the number of controls – is a big trend in the industry today. In this article, we demonstrate how the data professional can support a control convergence effort, by way of fictitious case study.

So, another version of Toad has been released. It happens a few times a year. If you’re lucky it’s up to you if and when you want to upgrade to get your bug fixes or new features. If you’re in a larger organization, there’s a standards committee that decides who gets what when. I thought I’d spend a few minutes to document what I see to be the key features available in v9.7 that would give someone serious reason to upgrade...

In this article, we talk about policies – an important area of your companies governance, risk, and compliance program. We discuss what a good policy looks like, and how you can evolve a policy data management system in 3 stages.

I have generally recommended in the past that whenever you are writing code to iterate through the elements of a collection, you should use a while loop, combined with the FIRST-NEXT or LAST-PRIOR collection methods.  

The key advantage of this approach is that the code will not raise a NO_DATA_FOUND exception if your collection is sparse (there is an index value between FIRST and LAST that is not defined). And if your collection is empty, the loop will not execute at all, whereas with a for loop, an empty collection could cause a VALUE_ERROR exception if you are not careful....

With Toad for Oracle 9.7 now available, I thought I’d cover how to configure and use Subversion with Toad’s code sharing utility – Team Coding. We had a lot of requests for this integration and here it is !  

The Subversion implementation in Toad allows you to use the conventional file-based check-out and check-in via the Editor’s File Open button. All you have to do is browse to the working folder, select your file...

Toad for Data Analysis now comes included with Toad for Oracle!

Human beings, by their very nature, make mistakes. Even seasoned professionals make simple errors on occasion. In this article we explore the “mistake database”, an architecture to help your company minimize errors.

On many occasions, people will email or call me to get help with perceived RAC connectivity issues for various client applications – Toad and other Quest products included. Now some times they may have setups that we’ve not pre-tested, so they have a potential bug – or at least another regression testing scenario for us. But many times, it’s simply a SQL*Net configuration issue. While it’s easy to draw a simple diagram of...

On this 7th anniversary of the September 11th catastrophe, we’ll take a close look at how to characterize disaster, and more importantly how to learn and move on.

We know that a lot of users have been frustrated by the search that was being used by Toad World.  It's no fun to know that Toad World probably has the answer to your question, the white paper or utiltiy you're looking for and not able to find it.  Well, we were feeling your pain, too.  Toad World has so much content that we were having problems finding stuff, too J.  

But, not any longer.  Today we launched a new search...

It’s not uncommon for software to increase in install size and memory footprint over the years – and Toad is no exception. But, that does not mean that these newer versions have to run more slowly. We take great pride in keeping Toad expedient as it matures. Thus do not simply assume that if your Toad is running slower these days – that it’s just the “cost of progress”. Most often there are simple steps to keeping Toad humming...

The editor window is probably where most users spend a majority of their time. In this blog, I’ll continue a conversation we had a few weeks ago.  Please note that all of these features are available in the standard edition of Toad for Oracle, version 9.6.

 

6.     Editor Options

  Toad has many options...

Recently, we got a question from a customer:



“Why does adding a ||'' to the end of a key value improve performance... in this case significantly, this query runs in 187 milliseconds regularly where without the ||'' it takes minutes to run... This is the only modification in the result set from SQL Optimizer that was made to this code block. I got this code from a developer, so I know there are other methods...

Inaccurate risk probabilities can wreak havoc on the applicability of your risk database. Why go through the trouble of setting it up, if bad probability entries render your database unusable? In this article, we explore the importance of getting the risk probability correct, and ways to improve your accuracy.

Automated maintenance began with DB2 LUW 8.2. At this time the behavior of automated utilities had to be controlled manually either through the Control Center or the automation wizard. Now with DB2 9.5 automation of RUNSTATS and REORG commands can be controlled by an XML document referred to as an “automatic maintenance policy” These policies control which objects are considered for automated maintenance, and what options...

 

It’s almost that time again as another exciting new release of Toad draws closer!  We’ve decided that, rather than let you wait until Toad 9.7 is released before you see what’s new, we’ll give you a little fore-taste now!  In this final blog (there are 2 parts), I want to cover what’s new for developers.  

  Data...

Compliance usually starts with a fire drill, however intelligent companies take the time to step back and put their compliance into perspective. Risk is the key to understanding and optimizing your compliance program. In this article, we discuss risk as an evolution from compliance, and look at some ways to model it in the enterprise.

I have, for the past several years, focused heavily on designing and building an automated code testing tool for PL/SQL: Quest Code Tester for Oracle. One feature that is often requested as a part of code testing is analysis of code coverage, answering questions like:

When I run my program do I use 50% of the code? 75% of the code?   Are there chunks...

It’s almost that time again as another exciting new release of Toad draws closer !  

We’ve decided that, rather than let you wait until Toad 9.7 is released before you see what’s new, we’ll give you a little preview now !  

The main objectives of this release are to provide improved knowledge and education on the wealth of Toad features for users, so that you can really see Toad’s full value and realise you...

Last week’s blog was the third in a series about how to make Toad run scripts and/or commands against multiple databases at once. Lots of people did not know that there are multiple ways in Toad to do this. This week I will highlight the fourth and final (???) method of running scripts against multiple databases using the new Toad...

A consistent pattern that emerges in compliance best practices, is the notion of accountability. Demonstrating accountability is a key component of building a solid compliance program. In this article, we explore the motivation, requirement, model, and architecture to make accountability a reality in your company.

Last week’s blog was the second in a series about how to make Toad run scripts or commands against multiple databases at once. Lots of people did not know that there are multiple ways in Toad to do this. This week I’ll highlight the third method of running scripts against multiple databases using the “Toad Editor” and Dynamic SQL...

Written by Rene Woody

This blog is a continuation of a series about the Batch Optimizer in Quest SQL Optimizer for Oracle.



In the Batch Optimizer in Quest SQL Optimizer for Oracle you may notice that the options for selecting which SQL alternatives to execute by the batch process are all based on the Oracle cost estimation. Although it is not a good idea to trust Oracle cost estimation for problematic...

In my previous blog, I covered things that you should know about Toad for Oracle’s editor. I thought for today we could spend a few minutes on what users may benefit the most from Toad’s cousin, Toad for Data Analysis. This blog will concentrate on working with SQL.

 

1.     SQL Recall   The time you’ve spent engineering...

A death march is a project that is doomed to fail. If you are in IT, and you are dragged onto a compliance project, chances are you will find yourself stuck here. In this article, I'll give you my tips for identifying a death march, and more importantly surviving one.

Last week’s blog was the first in a series about how to make Toad run scripts or commands against multiple databases at once. Lots of people did not know that there are multiple ways in Toad to do this. This week I’ll highlight the second method of running scripts against databases using the “Toad Project Manager”.   ...

The new SEC standards for SOX compliance have made it clear that your company should spend more time focused on financial risk. In this article, we’ll explore what’s driving this, how you as a database professional can help out, and some design considerations for a Financial Risk Compliance Data Mart.

One of the more frequent questions people ask me is why can’t Toad run scripts or commands against multiple databases at once? Of course as usual the answer is Toad already can – so I’m going to dedicate the next couple weeks’ blogs to this topic.    This week I’ll highlight the first method of running scripts for multiple databases using the “Toad Script Manager”. It has been in Toad for a long time now – and it’s available...

Continuing on with my discussions on autonomic computing in DB2 is the concept of self managing space. Proper space allocations are another critical factor when it comes to optimizing the performance of your database. Inadequate space allocations can result in application failures and potential downtime which will cost your organization money.

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This article wraps up the series on the types of controls and our discussion of architectures, by taking a look at the adaptive control. We’ll explore how you can support your business deal with the impact of risks, when there is no contingency plan.

When you go through the entire exhaustive process of doing an effective (i.e. accurate) logical model so that you have properly captured all the true business rules and requirements, you sure don’t want your data modeling tool to compromise those findings as you move into the physical model – which is database platform dependent. Yet most data modeling tools do a very poor job of translating certain data modeling constructs...

I thought that’d grab your attention!  

We know there are a lot of PL/SQL developers out there who are looking to make (or have already made) a break into application development using a more popular programming language like Java as well as many Java developers who use Toad to make access to Oracle easier.  

According to a 2006 IOUG survey of Oracle sites, the 3rd most widely used language after SQL and PL/SQL...