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Blogs
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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Location: Blogs
Jeff Smith's Blog
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| JeffSmith |
12/30/2009 |
What is it?
 You can read the full synopsis on one of the many websites the book is sold, but here is a quick description:
- Ideal for new and long-term Toad users
- Don’t let the “Developer’s Library” series category confuse you. This book is good for ANYONE who works with Oracle
- Updated for v9.7
- 250+ solid pages of content. This isn’t a quick reference guide with a lot of screenshots. Think of this as the equivalent of an OEM/3rd party manual, e.g. Haynes series
- Covers everything from installations, setup, use of most popular features, coverage of little-known utilities, and how to automate common everyday tasks.
- Perhaps the most important thing to realize about this book is the background of the two authors. This book was written by people who help develop the product, guide Quest Software as a company to react to the Oracle database, and people who make a living consulting firms how to get more out of their IT investments. Reading this book is like getting an inside look at how Quest envisions people using Toad in the REAL world.
Will this book help me?
I was ready to note all the topics this book ignored, all the ‘tricks’ it missed, that a book that tried to cover ‘everything’ about Toad would fail or be too hard to read. Thankfully that expectation was completely off base. If you want to get more out of Toad and prefer a nice book to hold instead of scouring the internet for useful information, then I think this is about as a solid bet as you can make.
Section Notes
- Setup and Configuration
- Exhaustively covers required environment to run. Note: v10 released after this book now supports WIN7 and the Oracle 11gR2 RDBMS
- Actually spends time on how to configure a database connection, not just what button to click in Toad
- Browsers (Database & Schema)
- All of my favorite navigational and filtering tricks here
- Learn how to customize the display maximize your efficiency and comfort level
- EXHAUSTIVE. Not a quick read. If you want a quick reference, don’t look to this book.
- Editors
- ALL of the keyboard shortcuts are covered. A huge boon to any developer
- Another example of stepping outside the Toad domain: Bert and Dan go into detail on the difference between binds and replacement variables and how they can impact performance. You will learn a great deal about Oracle via this book.
- Great flow. Starts with writing queries, then execution, then performance tuning - just operate in the real world.
- Debugging
- 12 pages dedicated to probably one of the most popular topics for an PL/SQL IDE
- Plenty of screenshots to make this very easy to digest
- Tuning
- Everything from execution plans to Auto Trace to Session Tracing
- Provides information to make even the novice feel more comfortable with a complicated topic
- Database Administration
- How to create, maintain, troubleshoot, and tune the database with Toad
- Scripting and Change Management
- DB Level tuning, from the free stuff like StatsPack to the pay stuff like OEM Diagnostic Pack
- ETC
- Master/Detail Browser, Query Builder – see the data w/o writing SQL from scratch
- ER Diagrams and Code Road Map – visualize workflows and interdependencies of your code and data objects
- Automation
- They save the best for last!
- One of the more complicated (and newer!) Toad topics, covered such that even a 2nd grader can understand
- Plenty of examples and even covers Toad’s command-line API
Summary
An exhaustive look at Toad, that doesn’t take that long to read and see immediate improvement in your day-to-day use of the tool. If you are new to Toad, this will shorten the learning curve. If you have been using Toad for 10 years, this will ensure you are not overlooking features or workflows that have snuck in while you weren’t looking.
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