Oracle introduced support for XML in the relational database going back at least to about the 8i release. Toad for Oracle introduced formal support for XML in the 8.0 release.

XML and Toad v8.0 – v9.7



As you browse or query an object, if it contains an XML

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So with Toad v10 being released, my Tips & Tricks guide became a bit out of date.  You can find an updated copy, as well as our v9 copy, here.  All of your favorite keyboard shortcuts and workflows remain largely unchanged, so this is more of an update for making sure screenshots and naming conventions are correct...

 In one of my previous lives, I worked at a startup company testing software. Our application used Oracle as the back-end and the nature of my role had me working closely with our Oracle DBA. As part of our processes, our DBA had to build documentation describing the schemas our application needed. The reports included things like table names, column names and their data types, indexes, etc. This used to take him hours until...

As I write this, I am flying back to Chicago now, 9 PM Oct 21, from Mexico City, after a very nice two day visit.

 

Quest Mexico asked me to come down to help celebrate the release of Toad Version 10. I said "OK."

 

And, wow, they did a really fantastic job of making me feel appreciated. Besides...

When designing and constructing a successful (i.e. effective and efficient) relational database, there are two fundamental sets of rules or design principles that are universally accepted and generally practiced by database architects.

Steven discusses how LTRIM works and an alternative solution for a user's problem.

TOAD offers three distinct ways to connect to your database, as shown by the three tabs circled below on the connection screen. In this week’s blog we’ll examine the differences between the first two: TNS and Direct. No matter which of the three methods you choose, TOAD requires the Oracle “SQL*Net” client to be on your PC. TOAD needs to talk over the network to your database, and that requires certain Oracle network DLL files...

A little known, but very handy feature of PL/SQL is the ability to apply set operators, like union, intersect and minus, to nested tables.

In case you missed my announcement on the Code Tester community forum, we have now posted a beta version of 1.9.

 

The major focus for 1.9 to date has been to add support for automated testing of object type methods. This beta release offers the first glimpse of this functionality; you should now be able to define tests for constructors, static methods, and member procedures and functions.

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Written by Steven Feuerstein   Code Tester is a relatively young tool (first released for production use in February 2007), but it has matured quickly (hey, at least I think so!) and is packed full of handy features.

 

As with all other tools, however, it can sometimes be hard to find the "jewels," so I thought I would highlight a couple.

 

1. Dynamically generated test cases

 

Rather...

Undocumented functionality in TDA, Toad for SqlServer, Toad for DB2 and Toad for MySQL to use advanced flow control when executing scripts.

The very latest generation of Toad for Oracle is about to hit the streets (early October) so we thought we’d give you a quick preview now so you’ll be up to speed when it’s released. This blog is part 2 and covers more of the new features and updates.

JProbe's new JDBC component nodes help link Java and SQL performance analysis together, to identify the root causes of performance issues in your applications, and to help you resolve those issues.

As DBAs it seems that we are always faced with issues of Database Performance. As gate keepers to our multiple database environments many of our Service Level Agreements (SLA's) can be directly tied into the health of our databases. Working with Quest's Toad solution we can now take a comprehensive look at the health of our databases with the DB Health Check.  Note: This Toad feature is only available in the commercial version...

Version 7.5 of Quest SQL Optimizer for Oracle will be released in October. The major effort for this new release was in the optimizer engine and the new UI for the optimization, index generation and execution functions. The following is a screen shot of the new UI. It looks tidy and easier to use compared to the old version. All the statistics names now use the Oracle standard naming, so, users can easy understand each statistics...