A full preview is in the works, but sometimes a new feature is so compelling you just want to start telling strangers on the street about it right away. Rather than make you wait till tomorrow to hear all about Apple’s new tablet device, here’s some juicy Toad gossip right now!

Perhaps one of the most productivity-enhancing features in Toad, the DESC (F4) command allows the user to get access to all guts of any database object from the editor. Perhaps the best way to think of it is a miniature schema browser dedicated to a single object. You can have multiple DESC windows open at any given time, and again, Toad supports it for ANY object in the database – not just tables and views like SQL*Plus supports.

How it works now

From the editor, type in the name of the object, and hit F4.

So this works great now, how could it get any better?

You Ask, You Get

I frequently let customers know that one of the beauties of Toad is that it is a user-driven application. The bulk of the features developed and enhanced are directly influenced by our 2 million (and growing!) user community.

A few weeks ago someone in the Beta community suggested we make it possible to invoke the DESC functionality on demand while ANYWHERE in Toad. At the moment a user must open an editor and type the name of the object to get a DESC window. I’ve found myself several times doing just this. And it takes a few seconds and clutters up my Toad desktop. Surely there is a better way?

Now there is!

In Toad 10.5, you can invoke a DESC at anytime! Just hit CTRL+D (D for DESC) and you get this window:

In this example whilst looking at a list of objects my session has accessed, I wanted to know a bit more about DBMS_JOB. So I just hit CTRL+D and up pops the ‘Quick Describe’ window. From here I can just input the name of the object and let Toad do the rest.

This is admittedly NOT a new mind-blowing feature in terms of engineering or technical marvel. However, I’d argue this will fundamentally change the way I currently use the tool, and it will save me a few seconds of time every time I use it. When Toad can make my day easier or scream by just a bit quicker, then I’m a happy user.