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Working With Date Ranges in Toad for Data Analysis |
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dnorwood
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4/30/2008 10:13 AM
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Often when writing a query you need to get data from a range of dates; when you start thinking about automating the SQL query it’s even more important. In this post I’ll show you a quick trick to let Toad for Data Analysis figure it out for you!
For this example I’ll be working with Oracle though it’s no different for other ...
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How Data Modeling Can Save Money |
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Bert
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Wednesday, April 30, 2008 4:46 AM
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It’s not uncommon to discover databases that have simply evolved over time rather than having been built according to some overall design or “master plan”. And there seem to be no shortage of answers as to why this occurs. Sometimes DBA’s are just far too busy with a myriad of other tasks. Sometimes developers are under th ...
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Why Can’t Johnny Use BMF? |
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MikeA
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Tuesday, April 29, 2008 8:05 AM
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As many of you are aware Quest provides a tool known as Benchmark Factory, BMF for short. BMF is a load generation tool that also allows you to install small databases for testing. The tools out of the box can provide TPC-B, TPC-D, TPC-H, AS3AP and many other standard benchmarks as well as allowing goal and scalability tests from your own code, either manually entered or scanned from text or, in the case of Ora ...
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Batch Optimizer Part 3 – Options Settings for the Batch Optimizer |
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RichardTo
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Friday, April 25, 2008 6:44 AM
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Written by Rene Woody
This blog is a continuation of a series about the Batch Optimizer in Quest SQL Optimizer for Oracle. It covers the execution options settings that determine which SQL statements will be automatically executed by the Batch Optimizer process and the method used for their execution.
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Need Help Fixing Tables with Duplicate Values? |
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JeffSmith
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4/24/2008
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Despite the best intentions of the DBA or the person who designed the data model, the collection of primary keys, unique indexes, constraints, and triggers are not a foolproof method of keeping duplicate records creeping into your tables and views. Any business rule in the database can be disabled. An even more likely scenario is the business rule changing after the fact. So ...
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Keep It Under Control With Approvals |
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JohnWeathington
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Thursday, April 24, 2008
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As a follow on to last week’s blog about controlling with reconciliation, in this blog we look at another common control – approvals. Here are some key tips for designing systems that demonstrate control with approvals.
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Landmines |
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MikeA
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Wednesday, April 23, 2008 6:20 AM
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Introduction
At the peak there were an estimated 65 million landmines planted in killing fields world wide. In the 1990’s it was estimated that while 2.5 million landmines were being deployed per year only 80,000 were being removed. According to current estimates this may have turne ...
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Toad Can Reduce Waits |
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Bert
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Wednesday, April 23, 2008 3:46 AM
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When using either Toad’s Stats Pack Browser or AWR Browser screens (both part of the optional DBA module and/or bundle), the plethora of graphs can sometimes be a wee bit overwhelming – as shown in the screen snapshot below. So how is any DBA in an urgent situation or hurry to both successfully and expediently interpret such database activity?
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Testing and refreshing data from production |
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StevenFeuersteinTW
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Thursday, April 17, 2008 9:21 AM
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As many of my readers likely know by now, I have been working for the past several years on the Quest Code Tester development effort.
Code Tester is the most powerful PL/SQL test automation tool available. You describe the expected behavior of your programs and Code Tester generates your test code, which can then be run from the UI or via a script. With Code Teste ...
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Keep It Under Control With Reconciliation |
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JohnWeathington
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Thursday, April 17, 2008
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In the compliance world, reconciliation is more than just making sure your data loaded properly. Here are some key tips to using reconciliation as a control in your compliance data system.
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Toad Fits Like a Glove |
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Bert
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Wednesday, April 16, 2008 5:42 AM
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I’ve seen some people on competing product discussion boards say things like Toad’s schema browser Is far too bloated – with too many tabs and images sucking up all the precious real-estate. But like anything else in Toad, if you don’t experiment with and utilize all the cool options it offers – you could very easily arrive at this quite mistaken conclusion. So ...
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Auto-formatting of templates for Toad |
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StevenFeuersteinTW
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Thursday, April 10, 2008 9:14 AM
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A few months ago, I posted on this blog an explanation of how to use Toad's Code Templates to standardize development and improve productivity. I included an XML document that contains over 20 templates that I thought you might find useful. I also asked my readers to produce XML transformations so that the XML document could be "output" in the format that Toad recognizes (and SQL Navigator as ...
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Prove It or Lose It! |
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JohnWeathington
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Thursday, April 10, 2008
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When audits are involved, you are guilty until proven innocent. Here are 4 key strategies to employ in the design of your compliance data system, that will prove your company’s innocence.
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Goal! Success through Storage |
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MikeA
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Thursday, April 03, 2008 7:29 AM
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On March 26, 2008 I gave a webcast on physical tuning named “Goal! Success through Storage.” Due to some delays starting it overran a bit so I wasn’t able to answer questions afterward as I usually do. So, here are the answers to all the questions that weren’t handled by Darren Mallet (who handles the questions online when I am webcasting, thanks Darren!)
< ...
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Toad – What Next? |
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Bert
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Wednesday, April 02, 2008 8:34 AM
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Recently, my Toad World blog asking whether we needed to update the Toad Handbook generated as many or more replies than all my other past blogs combined. So it obviously seems best to ask you guys – our customers and users – for more opinions and ideas. |
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Flood of Coffee Break Byte Videos, Thanks Gretchen! |
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JeffSmith
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3/31/2008
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The Toad World visitors may have noticed a recent surge in the number of videos available for viewing in the past few days. Toad World will debut a collection of 12 or so Coffee Break Bytes (video tutorials) to highlight the new features for the 9.6 release due out on April 1.
I think these videos very nicely compliment
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Batch Optimizer Part 1 – How the Batch Optimizer Works |
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RichardTo
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Friday, March 28, 2008 4:01 AM
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Written by Rene Woody
We all know that it is important to create SQL statements that perform well in our database environment, but all too often, after creating a SQL statement that retrieves the correct results, the optimizing of the SQL statement is left for another time. Frequently, that time never arrives. Quest SQL ...
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Let's Talk About Compliance! |
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JohnWeathington
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Thursday, March 27, 2008
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Inaugural entry for John Weathington’s Quest for Compliance. Here we get introduced to John, get clear on some compliance related definitions, and get acquainted with the impact compliance has on DBAs, database developers, and IT managers.
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Toad Should be a No-Brainer |
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Bert
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Wednesday, March 26, 2008 5:10 AM
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I often get asked by both new and exiting customers to aid them in the cost justification process for purchasing Toad or upgrading their licenses. I thought since I get asked this so often, maybe a short blurb on the topic would be generally beneficial.
To write this blog, I’m using Microsoft Word. When I’m done, I’ll be em ...
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Debugging PL/SQL, now available for everyone! |
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JeffSmith
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3/25/2008
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As of April 1, 2008, if you are a current on maintenance and are using at least version 9.6 of Toad for Oracle, you will have complete access to our PL/SQL, Stored Java Source, and SQL*Plus script debugger regardless of your edition of Toad. Since the debugger made its debut in version 6.3 released all the way back in February of 2000, the functionality has been offered as a premium in Toad for Oracle. ...
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An Analysis of Database Issues |
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MikeA
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Friday, March 21, 2008 9:58 AM
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In my ten plus years as a database consultant before joining Quest Software I had the opportunity to visit hundreds of client sites. At client sites I performed analysis of their environments to help them improve the performance of their database systems. In this blog I want to talk about the top ten performance-related issues that I saw over and over again.
The following table lists them in order of occurrence: ...
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Toad does RAC – Really |
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Bert
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Wednesday, March 19, 2008 5:08 AM
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An increasingly common question these days is does Toad support Oracle RAC (i.e. Real Application Clusters)? And if so – how, when and where?
HOW: There ...
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How to use the Quest SQL Optimizer |
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RichardTo
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Tuesday, March 18, 2008 5:31 AM
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Written by Rene Woody
Quest SQL Optimizer can do an extensive transformation of the syntax of a SQL statement while still maintaining the exact same result set. This exhaustive transformation can produce hundreds of SQL alternatives. So it is necessary to have some insight as how to find a SQL alternative that is better than your ...
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Weird PL/SQL |
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StevenFeuersteinTW
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Monday, March 17, 2008 12:57 PM
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Collaborate08, annual conference of the International Oracle User Group, and several other national and international user groups, will be held in Denver this year, from April 13th to the 16th. I am going to present three papers, including (for the first time) Weird PL/SQL. I thought you might enjoy reading about some of the weirdnesses of PL/S ...
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What’s Coming in Toad for Oracle 9.6? (Part 3) |
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JohnPocknell
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Monday, March 17, 2008
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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 to simultaneously conti ...
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What’s Coming in Toad for Oracle 9.6? (Part 2) |
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JohnPocknell
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Friday, March 07, 2008
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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 to ...
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Excel and Oracle – 2 Choices for the Query Writer |
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JeffSmith
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3/6/2008
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If you’re a loyal reader, you may remember a blog I published WAAAAAAAY back in July of last year. A few things have changed since then. Users now have 2 different Toad tools to help them get data from Excel merged into the data they already have access to in the Oracle da ...
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What’s Coming in Toad for Oracle 9.6 ? (Part 1) |
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JohnPocknell
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Thursday, February 28, 2008
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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 |
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Bert
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Wednesday, February 27, 2008 9:01 AM
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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 |
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Bert
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Wednesday, February 20, 2008 8:54 AM
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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 |
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Bert
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Wednesday, February 13, 2008 10:11 AM
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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! |
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MikeA
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Tuesday, February 12, 2008 9:28 AM
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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 |
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Bert
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Wednesday, February 06, 2008 7:36 AM
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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? |
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StevenFeuersteinTW
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Monday, February 04, 2008 11:56 AM
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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 |
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Bert
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Friday, February 01, 2008 12:17 PM
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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 |
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MikeA
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Thursday, January 24, 2008 2:20 PM
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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 |
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JeffSmith
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1/21/2008
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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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Questions from the Instant Replay Webcast |
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MikeA
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Wednesday, January 16, 2008 10:56 AM
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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 |
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JeffSmith
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1/11/2008
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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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Toad’s New & Improved Database Browser |
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Bert
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Thursday, January 03, 2008 11:08 AM
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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 |
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StevenFeuersteinTW
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Wednesday, December 19, 2007 5:41 PM
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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 |
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JimWankowski
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Tuesday, December 18, 2007 10:57 AM
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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 |
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Bert
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Monday, December 17, 2007 1:20 PM
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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 |
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JeffSmith
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12/12/2007
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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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