For more than 10 years now, Toad has been THE tool for Oracle developers, DBAs, and analysts.  A few years ago, Quest began introducing versions of Toad that brought native support to popular platforms such as DB2, SQL Server, and MySQL.  Oracle enthusiasts were able to jump over to a new RDBMS technology without having to leave their favorite productivity tool behind.

While most features were implemented to make the lives of developers (debugger, profiler, code editors) and DBAs (session/user/database management), we found that about 30% of our users fell into the ‘other’ category known as analyst.  We had ‘accidentally’ captured a portion of the market that was primarily interested in massaging data, creating reports, and answering key business questions for their organizations.  Features such as the Schema Browser and Query Builder were quickly adopted by these analysts and surely made their jobs easier. 

However, what would happen if Quest dedicated resources to making a version of Toad that explicitly addressed the day-to-day challenges of this analyst audience?  The answer to this question is about debut in the form of Toad for Data Analysis.  Normally Toad includes the database vendor supported via the name of the product.  So, what database connections do we support for this product?

Quest is now happy to be releasing a new version of Toad that offers native connectivity to Oracle, DB2, SQL Server, & MySQL all via a single application.  In addition, you can connect to Access databases AND Microsoft Excel spreadsheets and query these data sources just as if they were a real database J  And even better, we offer connectivity to any other database vendor that supports ODBC.  We have even spent quite a bit of time ensuring that vendors such as Sybase and Terradata will behave nicely.  

Just what is Toad for Data Analysis?

Most of the problems and challenges we’ve heard from our customers regarding Toad generally boil down to this – “While we LOVE the productivity gains that Toad provides, it is generally much too powerful, and way too complicated for some of our biggest users.  They just need to query data, write reports, and understand the relationship of the objects in the database.”  With that in mind, we decided to discover the biggest problems this user encounters on a daily basis and deliver an easy-to-understand solution based on Toad around it.  This centerpiece workflow makes its presence known immediately upon opening the product for the first time.

  Just what can I do with this tool?

Users are prompted to ‘discover’ their database connections, and we’re off to the races!  One of the nice features of Toad for Data Analysis is that is will automatically recognize any existing Toad for Oracle connections you have already defined on your computer.

This forum isn’t really the appropriate place to talk about EVERYTHING Toad for Data Analysis offers, so I am just going to go over a few of my favorite features.  At the end, I’ll be sure to show you how to get a copy of this new tool right away!

Top 10 Reasons I Love Toad for Data Analysis (for now!)

1. I can now query ANY database or collection of data with a single tool.

2. I can use SQL to find the important data in my massive spreadsheets.

Toad’s grid allows for fast grouping and easy navigation

3. ER Diagrammer documents object relationships for easier querying

The ER Diagrammer allows me to visually see the relationships.  I can then send the objects to the Query Builder so Toad can help me construct my SQL query!

4. ‘In Your Face’ filtering notification.

 
No more ‘losing’ tables!  If you have a filter, you’ll know it

5. Spectacular BLOB support for Oracle

View images natively in Toad, or see their HEX equivalent!  Save or Load images automatically by pointing to a file.

6. Multiple Table/Object comparison of data
Toad for Oracle has allowed you to compare the data of two tables for quite some time now.  Toad for Data Analysis takes that a step further and allows you to select multiple objects between 2 different sources.

Select your objects, view the differences, and synchronize the sources!

7. Built-in tutorials and videos

Want to learn more about Toad’s support for Excel?  Watch the movie!

8. Card or Grid view for Data

Think ‘Single Record View’ format for viewing multiple records at once.

9. Make Toad for Data Analysis look like your favorite IDE

Tell the Configuration Wizard which IDE you want to emulate. 

10. Full support for Unicode
OK Oracle junkies, you now have a member of the Toad family that can view and update any Unicode based dataset.

Example with Diacritical Characters

Example with Korean Characters

So how do I get a copy?

Toad for Data Analysis is available for purchase on a per-seat basis. Additionally, for those of you who own Toad for Oracle, Toad for Data Analysis will be available for an extended evaluation period. Please visit www.quest.com/toad-for-data-analysis for more details or to download an evaluation copy.