Big thanks to our SQL Server community for naming Toad your favorite database development tool and gold medal winner of the 2011 Community Choice Awards by SQL Server Magazine.

Jason Bovberg, senior editor at Windows IT Pro said, “Our Windows IT Pro, SQL Server Magazine and DevProConnections awards programs are unique...

Toad® for SQL Server is a productivity toolset for SQL Server administration, performance tuning, and development. It has earned multiple awards, including back-to-back “Best of Tech-Ed” wins. And a new version is now available.

Toad for SQL Server version 5.6 provides several customer fixes and minor enhancements. You can learn more about this release in the Release Notes or just try the product for free for...

Toad is an Integrated Development Environment for SQL Server, also known as an IDE (wiki).

Never heard of Toad before? Toad is famous in the Oracle world, but it probably more like the best-kept-secret in the SQL domain. Most folks find it because they are looking for ‘Toad’ that will help them with SQL Server.



That’s...

It happens more often than I like to admit, but I was asked a question about Toad that I could not figure out. A co-worker was trying to help a customer emulate a SSMS feature – the ability to program stored procedures to a keyboard shortcut or keystroke sequence.

I got part of the way there – Code Snippets. These can be customized and programmed by the end user to call frequently bits of code or scripts on demand. What I was missing was how to assign a keyboard shortcut to each snippet. Of course it was staring at me right in the face.

...

                One of my favorite features of Toad for Data Analysts 2.7 (TDA) is automating complex excel reports. Most reports consist of several sets of data and formatting to make the data attractive or easily readable for the end-user. In this post I will show how to automate these kinds of reports with a combination of export and excel macros.

                My sample Sales report consists of the Top 5 products...

Load testing is an interesting topic. Application load testing is what most people are familiar with. They either use something like LoadRunner, or they ask half the company to ‘jump on the website and start clicking buttons.’

But what about the database? In this case, what about SQL Server? Will it be able to sustain the workload as it increases? Will the performance SLAs hold? Does the average response time for a transaction increase at a predictable rate as the user load goes up?

This feature has been around for awhile in the Toad product family (SQL Server, DB2, MySQL, and Data Analysts), however it was upgraded for Toad for SQL Server, version 5.0.

Here’s a quick run-down:

Open the Editor Load up your T-SQL and get ready to have fun. You will need to activate the ‘Group Execute’ panel by mouse-right-clicking in the editor and toggling ‘on’ the ‘Show Group Execute’ item at the bottom...

In this post I’ll finish the conversation with an overview of Toad’s Compare and Synch feature set.

That’s right folks! Toad for SQL Server has been recognized AGAIN as the best development tool for SQL Server.

This is not a volley in the RDMBS wars. This is a quick cheat sheet for getting started using Toad for SQL Server if you are already used to using Toad for Oracle.

For those of you who have been living under a rock for the past decade, Toad is one of the most popular database administration and development tools for the Oracle RDBMS. It just so happens that Toad is also available for Microsoft’s SQL Server platform.

This blog serves as a quick introduction to Toad for SQL Server for those who may have just heard about it. It seems that many folks find Toad extremely powerful for...

What’s the first thing we learn when it comes to databases and/or SQL? Odds are it was how to write a SQL statement to retrieve data from one or more tables.

In this blog I'll discuss how to debug a Toad for Data Analysts Automation Script.

In this posting I show how to automate exporting and importing and highlight the new changes in this area for Toad for Data Analysts 2.6.

In this posting I'll show you what Toad for Data Analysts has to offer when using SQL Date Ranges

In this post I’ll show you how to define and use automation variables to email a customized lettes to an email list.

In this post I'll show how to produce an exception report using the row count variable and if..condition automation activity.

Scripting repetitive tasks can ease your work load. Here's how to do it in TDA.

Often database professionals need good freeware tools to get their job done. Sometimes it’s because there’s no funding for software. And in some cases a tool is needed to replace the purchased tool that ends up not being able to do the job. Finally in today’s world of open source, some people just hate to pay for tools – even if there is budget and/or the job clearly could benefit from commercial quality tools.

For...

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

Like most applications, Preferences or Options enable the user to make changes to the default configuration to suit the way they work. The same is true for Toad but there are so many, for some it can be a bit of a challenge finding what they are looking for.

 

The objective of this blog is to help you get a handle on what the main options are that you probably need to know about.  Note that the screen captures...