I really enjoy when I get to present to an audience that asks questions and interacts with me during the presentation.  The interaction does two things for me:  1.  validates that what I’m presenting is helpful to the audience and 2.  forces me to continually understand the underlying technology and how our products interact with said technology.  Sometimes point #2 is the result of a pause-inducing “huh?” moment spawned by...

If you’ve ever used the Code Snippets feature, in Toad for Data Analysts, you may have found the list to be, well, rather robust.  The solution provides snippets for the majority of database platforms supported by the solution (DB2 LUW, DB2 z/OS, SQL Server, Oracle, MySQL, Sybase, and ODBC).  Why do I want to view snippets for DB2 when I’m working with a SQL Server database?  Good question.

It appears that the latest...

I was recently demonstrating our SQL Optimizer for DB2 LUW solution when a question came up regarding comparing Access Plans in the Index Expert portion of the Optimizer.  Excellent question indeed!  However, before I go any further, perhaps a little background on the Index Expert is warranted.

The Index Expert allows you to simulate indexes for a SQL statement.  We use our technology to generate virtual indexes (i.e....

I’ve been working with our Visual Studio add-in solution called Toad Extension for Visual Studio (commonly known as TEx).  This solution is basically a database schema provider that allows me to work with an off-line model of my Oracle schema as an Oracle database project within Visual Studio.  When it’s time to push your changes (deploy in Visual Studio), TEx allows you to specify deploying to a database, a script, or both.  Well, traditionally I’ve pushed changes strictly to my database, but I thought I’d poke around with the script option.

One of the cool things about my job is that I get to play with Beta versions of our software.  Actually, you can play too by going to the product’s Beta download page on Toad World.  I’ve been playing a little bit with version 4.7 of Toad for DB2 which, as you’ve probably guessed by now, is currently in Beta.  There are a couple of new features I find exciting in this upcoming...

Just this week, I was on-site with a customer and learned about a neat feature of Toad for Oracle 10.x’s new data grid component. Apparently, you can view parent table data from a child record. This was news to me.

One aspect of Toad for DB2 drives me a little nutty. Specifically, it’s that the Object Compare feature doesn’t actually show me what’s different. Oh, it shows me that differences exist, but that’s not enough information for me. I want to actually SEE what’s different. I know, shame on me.

The Object Compare feature actually runs a compare and sync operation. The resulting DDL script generates the appropriate CREATE/ALTER...

In a previous post, we discussed how Toad Extension for Visual Studio helped us analyze the impacts of changes to our code. As part of that discussion, we introduced the idea that sweeping changes may need to occur and iterating through a list of impacted objects isn’t the most efficient means of dealing with these kinds of changes. Before...

If you’re anything like me, sometimes, you are your worst enemy. Rarely is this intentional behavior on our part, but sometimes life hands you a loaded pistol pointed at your foot and places your finger on the trigger.

I had the privilege of recently attending a road show for the Toad Extension for Visual Studio product from Quest Software. How did I get so lucky? Well, it helps that I’m actually an employee of Quest Software. Fortunately for me, the Product Manager requested my attendance despite the fact that he was facing numerous hours trapped in a car with me. Nearly a week later, I suspect he’s still haunted from the experience.

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I have to giggle whenever I read the title of this entry. No, it’s not because I think I’m the King of Comedy (though, I do look pretty funny). The title came from a quote spoken by a former boss I had in a previous life. We were in a meeting with one of those co-workers who notoriously covers all the details of a topic, but rarely gets to the point. After about an hour of soaking in this increasingly irrelevant series of...

Using indexes can improve the performance of applications using the database. This is well known to many, many people. However, the application of too many indexes can have the reverse effect. There’s a balance that must be struck and you may find yourself needing to locate indexes that aren’t being used. If you’re already using the Quest SQL Optimizer for DB2 LUW, you can take advantage of the Index Usage Analyzer to help...

Did you know that you can call Spotlight on DB2 LUW from Toad for DB2 LUW and vice versa? Well, ok maybe you did. If that’s the case, please move along, there’s nothing to see here. Still with me? Then read on!

Toad for DB2 LUW and Spotlight on DB2 LUW exist as separate executables on your workstation. You might now be thinking “no kidding, Ben.” That’s fine. After all, I have been called the Master of the Obvious. However,...

Quest Software has two of the most powerful tools for PL/SQL development: Toad for Oracle and SQL Navigator for Oracle. Personally, I spend more time working with Toad for Oracle and I truly enjoy the solution. Before I proceed any further, I want to clarify a point. I am not advocating one solution over the other for PL/SQL development. That’s a conversation I refuse to have, because it borders on arguing which religion is...

 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...

Sometimes, I’m asked to help a customer work through a particular challenge they’re facing when using one of Quest’s solutions. Many times, the meetings are one-on-one sessions with the customer where we take turns sharing our desktops to better understand the problems being faced and how the solution might be able to address the problems. I actually enjoy the one-on-one sessions, because it gives me deeper insight into how our customers are using our solutions. Plus, it’s a great way to meet and connect with people, which is the part of my job I enjoy the most. Yes, at times, I’ve been called ‘weird’.

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Managing and working with large scripts can be challenging. Failures during the execution of such scripts can make a person downright cranky. Personally, I’ve never liked scrolling through hundreds of lines of code to isolate the problem in a script, hopefully correct the issue, and then attempt to restart the execution at the proper line. For those of you using Toad for DB2 4.5, you may not be aware of a new feature that...

By default, adding an entity to a Workspace will cause this entity to be added to every workspace within your model. Well, the entity isn’t really being duplicated; it’s just that a shortcut to that entity is being added to every workspace in the model. Recently, we’ve received some questions from customers asking how they can change this behavior. Fortunately, it’s really easy to do. Before I tell you how to change this...

I sometimes worry that people are confused about how to use the Quest SQL Optimizer for Oracle to help them tune their SQL statements. The solution is extremely powerful and provides you with the options to control numerous aspects of the optimization process. In fact, I suggest you read Richard To’s articles on Toad World to get an in depth understanding of the optimization process and the various settings within the SQL...

Last week, I was demonstrating some of our DBA-focused features of Toad for DB2 LUW (Linux, Unix, Windows). When we came to the topic of Extended Alters, the audience voiced some concerns about the efficiency of this feature. Specifically, they were concerned with how Toad for DB2’s generated script was handling the data stored in the table we were altering. The customer is dealing with very large data sets, so simple INSERT statements were not going to help. They wanted to know if Toad for DB2 could take advantage of some DB2 utilities that make this process more efficient. Let’s explore the scenario a little further.

As I promised earlier, the focus of this blog entry will be using the Editor in Toad for Data Analysts. The Editor is where you can enter your own SQL code to query the database. Since you’re already familiar with Toad for Oracle’s Editor, you’ll notice some similarities in Toad for Data Analysts. Hopefully, these similarities will...

In Part III of this series of blogs, I’ll discuss the Query Builder in Toad for Data Analysts. In my previous entry, I said that I would talk about both the Editor and the Query Builder in Part III. Both features are so rich that I feel that separating the topics would be the best approach. So, we’ll focus on the Query Builder for this topic. 

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Previously, we discussed how to establish connections to the database. If you’re interested in a refresher, the entry can be found here: http://www.toadworld.com/Community/Blogs/tabid/67/EntryID/382/Default.aspx Now that we’ve connected to the database, we’ll examine how to work with the database objects. 

 

Where are my...

In this series of blog topics, I will attempt to translate certain features in Toad for Data Analysts for those of you who are more familiar with Toad for Oracle. As you may (or may not) know, Quest Software allows licensed owners of Toad for Oracle 9.7 to use Toad for Data Analysts free of charge! Toad for Data Analysts is Quest Software’s cross-database platform Query and Reporting tool. For Developers and DBAs who work predominately in Oracle, but have the need to query and/or report against other database platforms (SQL Server, DB2, and Sybase, just to name a few), then the pairing of Toad for Oracle and Toad for Data Analysts is for you. 

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