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Toad and Database Commentaries

Toad World blogs are a mix of insightful how-tos from Quest experts as well as their commentary on experiences with new database technologies.  Have some views of your own to share?  Post your comments!  Note:  Comments are restricted to registered Toad World users.

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Most recent blog entries
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What’s Coming in Toad for Oracle 9.6 ? (Part 1)
JohnPocknell Thursday, February 28, 2008
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 this release of Toad before you see what’s new, we’ll give you a little fore-taste now !
 
The emphasis on this release is ...
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Database Version Control via Toad
Bert Wednesday, February 27, 2008 9:01 AM
One key task for many DBAs is maintaining a database version control or change revision history. Database version control affords the DBA the ability to restore the database to any prior state, or to detect unplanned database revisions that cause the database to be out of compliance with its specification. One could argue that the latter scenario would unlikely happen in a well controlled production environment ...
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Toad Database Probe Customization
Bert Wednesday, February 20, 2008 8:54 AM

Did you know that Toad’s Database Probe screen is customizable? That’s why it’s vastly superior to the simple Database Monitoring screen. Here’s a basic screen snapshot:
 
 < ...

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Toad and Monitoring Indexes
Bert Wednesday, February 13, 2008 10:11 AM
Ever wonder which indexes are being used in your database? Well Oracle 9i introduced the capability to track index usage. But you had to learn new ALTER INDEX command syntax to support this and then how to query V$OBJECT_USAGE view to see the index usage information. Well I’m too darn lazy, and why not be – as with most things in Oracle, Toad cleanly exposes this feature and increases its us ...
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First, don’t Panic!
MikeA Tuesday, February 12, 2008 9:28 AM
I was working the other day to rebuild my Linux 32 bit cluster in preparation for doing some tests between OEM and PAO for some internal training. I planned to use raw for my cluster configuration and voting files for CRS and ASM for the rest of the shared files. The 32 bit cluster had been up and operating fine and I had completed the testing I was doing so I retasked the drives to build a 64 bit cluster. I dr ...
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Toad Dynamic SQL Scripting
Bert Wednesday, February 06, 2008 7:36 AM
Sometimes people will request that Toad have a certain special new feature, often special to the task at hand which they’re trying to accomplish. Keeping in mind my recent Toad blog about SQL*Plus compatibility, there are very often easy ways to use existing Toad features to do what the ...
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Just how popular is PL/SQL?
StevenFeuersteinTW Monday, February 04, 2008 11:56 AM
Just how popular is PL/SQL?
 
And how many PL/SQL developers are there "out there"?
 
These are surprisingly hard questions to answer. Officially and even unofficially, Oracle Corporation's point people on PL/S ...
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Toad and SQL*Plus Compatibility
Bert Friday, February 01, 2008 12:17 PM
Sometimes people will ask why can’t Toad work more like SQL*Plus – and the funny thing is the answer is quite often it does. You really just need to know how SQL*Plus works – and then look for the same feature within Toad. Let’s take a very, very common scenario that gets asked almost every quarter. Look at my SQL*Plus SELECT command in the screen snapshot below. Suppose ...
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Q&A from Webcast on using Indexes to Boost Performance
MikeA Thursday, January 24, 2008 2:20 PM
I recently gave a webcast about using indexes to boost your application performance, of course at the end of the webcast we took questions, unfortunately I wasn’t able to anser all of the questions so I pulled the ones I felt were most important and decided to answer them here in my blog. For the full webcast see :
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A Complete Solution for Oracle DBAs
JeffSmith 1/21/2008
How often are you offered less work or fewer responsibilities? Rarely does that ever happen, and if it does, it could be a bad sign! Well, as a database administrator, your job gets more and more complex every day even as RDBMS vendors keep adding ‘automated management’ features. On top of all your day-to-day tasks and preventive maintenance you perform, your most ...
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Stats Pack Once Again
Bert Wednesday, January 16, 2008 1:16 PM
Last month, Jeff Smith wrote an excellent blog about Toad’s new Stats Pack capabilities.  And as Jeff pointed out, Stats Pack is an older – but free technology. While Oracle’s AWR and ADDM reports are clearly the next generation of performance diagnostics to ...
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Questions from the Instant Replay Webcast
MikeA Wednesday, January 16, 2008 10:56 AM
Well, here I sit at 30,000 feet over the Atlantic heading for London and then on to Abu Dhabi. It seems like just yesterday I was doing a webcast for the Performance Allstars series on Instant Replay and the use of history to find problems, oh wait, that was yesterday!
 
During the webcast many excellent questions where asked concerning historical data c ...
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Toad for Data Analysis – Tips ‘N’ Tricks
JeffSmith 1/11/2008
One might be tempted to think that with such a young tool like Toad for Data Analysis (TDA), that it would be a bit early to start trumpeting its advanced features and ‘hidden’ productivity boosters. In this case, one would be very wrong! Although Toad for Data Analysis is only up to release 1.1, it is built on top of Toad for SQL Server and Toad for DB2’s award w ...
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Functions should return data only through the RETURN clause
StevenFeuersteinTW Monday, January 07, 2008 2:46 PM
You will find below an excerpt from my latest publication: the 2nd edition of Oracle PL/SQL Best Practices.  This edition is a complete rewrite of the 1st edition. I decided that since software is still, for the most part, written by hu ...
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Toad’s New & Improved Database Browser
Bert Thursday, January 03, 2008 11:08 AM

There are many different types of Toad® users, and since job titles and descriptions vary so widely, it’s tough to say a typical Toad user looks like this and thus needs this. Thus Toad has evolved over time to meet the ever growing needs of our customers. Quest has two key Toad Yahoo discussion groups to fa ...

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Single quotes and CLOBs in 10.2.0.3
StevenFeuersteinTW Wednesday, December 19, 2007 5:41 PM

I usually write about best practice principles and general issues.

Today I thought I would share a bit of my pain with you on a very specific topic: single quotes and CLOBs, and specifically on O ...

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Custom Data Reporting with Toad for DB2
JimWankowski Tuesday, December 18, 2007 10:57 AM
One of the nicer features within Toad® for DB2 is the wide array of reporting capabilities. There is a constant requirement for managerial level reports that need to be run on a regular basis. Many of these reports are generating using reporting tools like QMF, Crystal Reporting, etc. Toad’s data reporting facility p ...
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Speed Up Toad
Bert Monday, December 17, 2007 1:20 PM
It’s not uncommon for software to increase in install size and memory footprint over the years – and Toad®
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More Toys for DBAs
JeffSmith 12/12/2007

I’ve been promising to deliver a write-up on Toad’s new support for Statspack, and I’ve finally gotten around to doing it!  Statspack has been around since the 8i release of Oracle. 

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Error Management functions and features for PL/SQL Developers
StevenFeuersteinTW Tuesday, December 04, 2007 8:41 PM
Winter is descending on Chicago; we had our first snow (flurries, really) on Thanksgiving Day, and the sun is weak. For many, this is a depressing time – and I mean that the lack of that and cold actually does make people feel depressed. Per ...
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Super & Sub Type Option #1
Bert Friday, November 30, 2007 3:50 PM

When we create a super-and-sub type (a.k.a. Inheritance) entity relationship in a logical data model, it’s very clear what the business requirements being communicated are – that different subsets of attributes comprise the “cumulative entity” being modeled depending upon the business context. &l ...

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Upgrading to 9.5? Read this first!
JeffSmith 11/29/2007
I was initially planning on writing up a review of the new Statspack support in Toad version 9.5 for my next blog, but I wanted to make sure all of our Toad users were aware of the new installation process first!

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My Favorite Templates – in one convenient file
StevenFeuersteinTW Wednesday, November 28, 2007 1:24 PM

Would you like to increase productivity, improve code quality, and ensure that standards are being followed? Of course you would! And one of the best ways to do that is to rely heavily on Toad's Code Templates (similar functionality exists in SQL Navigator as well).

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Multi-Location Script Executions
JimWankowski Wednesday, November 21, 2007 8:24 PM

In many cases there is a need to create an object or to execute an SQL statement in multiple locations. The group execute option in TOAD for DB2 allows you to execute a script against multiple environments with one easy step.&nb ...

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Questions I hear over and over and over…
JeffSmith 11/20/2007
I have worn many different hats here at Quest, and recently put on another in the Sales organization. Regardless of what my official title has been, talking to our Toad customers has always been one of the most rewarding aspects of my career. I decided a long time ago that I would do all I could to master Toad and share my findings with others. I hope to ne ...
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Oracle 11g on a notebook: Tread Lightly
Bert Friday, November 16, 2007 10:41 AM
This blog posting is not meant to demean or slander the Oracle database in anyway. I’ve staked almost my entire career on Oracle technologies – and I intend to finish these last 7-10 years doing more Oracle stuff. To quote a funny Saturday Night Live skit: “Oracle has been very, very good to me.” So my comments are mo ...
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Catching up with me at Oracle OpenWorld
StevenFeuersteinTW Sunday, November 11, 2007 11:13 AM
Sorry about the late posting, but if you are interested in attending my presentations, here's the info:

Session ID: S290723
Session Title: Break Your Addiction to ...

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Expedite Saving Data via Toad
Bert Tuesday, November 06, 2007 8:14 AM

Probably one of the most useful and frequented tasks performed with Toad® for Oracle is saving data to a file, such as comma delimited text (or any of the other numerous formats supported). It’s a relatively easy feature to find – you simply depress the “right hand mouse” (RHM) ...

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Oracle Parallel Query Abuse
Bert Wednesday, October 31, 2007 6:46 AM
Oracle’s Parallel Query Option (PQO) is a fantastic tool, but much like any good tool, it can very easily be used in the wrong situation or simply abused. In those cases, PQO can actually make database performance much worse. Let’s examine some common misuses or misperceptions regarding optimal and efficient PQO usage.
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TheThree Letter Word
JimWankowski Monday, October 29, 2007 2:27 PM
I just got back from the IBM IOD conference in Las Vegas; it was a great show. Every year there is usually some buzz about what is “hot” with DB2. This year’s buzz was heard loud and clear – XML was being discus ...
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Tuning – Detection, Diagnosis, and Prevention
JeffSmith 10/26/2007
If you frequent Toad® World, then you are probably aware of the fact that Quest has a technology that offers to
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Running Toad on Linux!
Bert Monday, October 22, 2007 4:09 AM
OK – now that I grabbed your full attention with that snappy title, let’s see just how to run the Toad® on your Linux desktop or notebook. Let’s say that you’re running Redhat, CentOS, SuSE or Ubuntu Linux on your PC, let’s further assume that you would like to run Toad either ...
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An Exercise in Refactoring: Are two files equal?
StevenFeuersteinTW Thursday, October 18, 2007 8:50 AM

All files referenced in document available from: www.oracleplsqlprogramming. ...

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A Sneak Peak
JeffSmith 10/15/2007
They say time flies when you’re having fun, and it seems like 2007 has gone by at a record pace. 2007 has seen quite a few exciting developments in the ‘Toad World’ arena. In addition to Toad World itself, we have seen a new unit testing tool for PL/SQL and a version of Toad made just for analysts released. In addition we&r ...
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DB2 Day to Day
JimWankowski Friday, October 12, 2007 11:13 AM

Hey DB2’ers,

I had a busy week last week speaking at the Central Canadian DB2 Users Group in Toronto

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Top Ten Benchmarking Misconceptions
Bert Wednesday, October 10, 2007 10:26 PM

1. I’m using a tool like Quest’s Benchmark Factory®, so that’s all I need.

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Simplifying Database Administration – Part 1
JohnPocknell Wednesday, October 10, 2007
Problem Resolution

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What about a Self-learning SQL Optimizer?
RichardTo Tuesday, October 09, 2007 4:45 AM

There are at least two database vendors are trying to build self-learning SQL optimizers. The idea is to use actual statistics from executed SQL statements to rectify the future cost estimation of the same or similar SQL statements. It seems like a good idea, but, you will find that their existing self-learning ...

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Team Coding???
JeffSmith 10/3/2007

Every software product has a feature or widget that is extremely powerful, but finds a way to confuse more people than it enlightens.

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Toad Sometimes Slow on Oracle 10g?
Bert Tuesday, October 02, 2007 9:44 AM
Often people will write or call to relate that Toad® seems sluggish when working against Oracle 10g databases – and that creating new connections in particular seems to take an unreasonably long time. They are often especially frustrated since this problem did not occur with Oracle versions prior to 10g. So what is T ...
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It’s A Dirty Job – But Someone’s Got To Do It !
JohnPocknell Monday, October 01, 2007
There’s no doubt about it - being a DBA is not easy.

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Roll with the Changes
JimWankowski Friday, September 28, 2007 3:16 PM
One of the questions I get quite a bit from customers is; do we have the ability to compare data and/or have the ability to compare DDL files to what’s currently in the DB2 catalog?  As of V3.0 of TOAD for DB2 the ...
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Further Travels in Betaland
MikeA Friday, September 28, 2007 3:13 PM
Well, I decided that Linuxtown wasn’t going anywhere very fast and with the all the SRs I was leaving in my wake I soon would not be welcome by the locals so I decided I would take it on the lamb over to Windowsville for a while. Besides it was looking like the local disk array was going to pin a power supply failure on me.& ...
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SQL, Fast & Tastes Good
JeffSmith 9/27/2007
A US-based fast food chain apparently has a new advertising campaign running. I’m not exactly sure what it is supposed to be for, and most of their commercials are pretty confusing. They do have one that I like< ...
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Don't start with a blank slate!
StevenFeuersteinTW Wednesday, September 26, 2007 10:23 AM
Use templates to accelerate high quality coding.

When you open a new edit window in Toad, it looks like this:

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Toad Subsets Data
Bert Monday, September 24, 2007 7:43 AM

A common task for DBAs is to create a test or development environment that has a subset of production data for testing and development purposes. As usual, Toad

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Quseful #8: Execute DDL statements from a file
StevenFeuersteinTW Thursday, September 20, 2007 10:37 AM

What's the point?
This utility will make it easy for you to read in the contents of DDL statements (like CREATE OR REPLACE PACKAGE) and execute them within Oracle.

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The Attack of the Clones!
JimWankowski Monday, September 17, 2007 11:28 AM
This week I am going to switch gears over to the big iron and talk about DB2 z/OS. IBM has been making great strides in the area of schema management. As any mainframe DBA knows, the process of having to make a seemingly simple schema change can result in a very complex combination of DDL, Utilities and batch processes. These changes can result in applicati ...
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In what version did Oracle add that feature?
StevenFeuersteinTW Friday, September 14, 2007 11:08 AM
I get this question a lot. I am teaching a class and a student asks: "When did Oracle add autonomous transactions?" Or the INDICES of clause. Or – who knows what?

Seeing as I am totally obses ...

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A SQL Performance History from AWR
RichardTo Thursday, September 13, 2007 2:51 PM
I have been working on SQL Tuning research for more than 10 years, but my focus has changed to time-series forecast technology in the last two years. Recently, Oracle’s AWR and other database vendor’s statistics/metrics repository have drawn my attention. The relatively low cost of keeping performance statistics in databases, combined wi ...
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