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.

 

I’m hoping this week’s post will open up quite a lively exchange. Every time we ask people what they’d like to see in the next version of Toad – we get the stock answer of just fix bugs. And we’ve heard you loud and clear – that remains a key focus for each and every release. But if you had to pick your one new, must have feature – what would it be?

 

If I had to guess based upon emails and the Yahoo group discussion board comments, one developer feature that seems to have a popular following would be to add the ability for the Toad Editor to automatically enforce via substitution (like automatic spell correction) naming standards for package headers, package bodies, triggers, procedures, functions, variables, cursors, exceptions, pragmas and such. What do you think?

 

One idea for DBA’s might be something like adding RMAN language support to the Toad Editor. That way DBA’s could create, modify and execute backup and recovery scripts all from within Toad – like they currently do for SQL scripts and PL/SQL code. Imagine having all your Toad favorite editing features for that special need – including syntax highlighting and formatting. Heck – I might even start doing some more RMAN work if Toad had that capability.

 

Notice how these last two novel ideas are not really new screens or wizards – but rather augmentations to existing features that hopefully will improve productivity. In fact, both ideas were nothing more than extensions to just one feature – the Toad Editor. I have to believe there are numerous legitimate additional ideas – so be a pal and send them in.

 

So the task at hand is to reply to this blog – and help drive our product roadmap and new feature prioritization along lines you’d like to see. Thanks in advance…