It’s not uncommon for software to increase in install size and memory footprint over the years – and Toad® is no exception. But, that does not mean that these newer versions have to run more slowly. We take great pride in keeping Toad expedient as it matures. Thus do not simply assume that if your Toad is running slower these days – that it’s just the “cost of progress”. Most often there are simple steps to keeping Toad humming along.
Below are five easy ways to make sure you’re getting the best productivity from Toad:
1. Run the Toad Advisor – and see what it turns up. Often the “low hanging fruits” it points out can make a significant performance improvement for the few seconds it takes to run and examine.
2. Make sure your Oracle data dictionary (i.e. catalog) statistics are appropriate for your database version. So if your Oracle database version is 9i or less, there should be NO statistics collected for SYS or SYSTEM. And if your Oracle database version is 10g or greater, then there must be statistics gathered for SYS and SYSTEM. And note that Oracle 10g does NOT do this automatically for you. Unfortunately, the automatic 10g “stats job” does everything except these schemas. See the following for more info:
http://asktoad.com/DWiki/doku.php/faq/answers/database_versions#why_can_toad_sometimes_seem_to_run_slower_on_10g
http://www.toadworld.com/Community/ExpertsBlog/tabid/67/EntryID/135/Default.aspx
3. Make sure the option for “Highlight Table Names” is off – as this setting requires Toad to load all database table names into memory. This could lead to excessive memory consumption and slow connection times. This is probably the single most often reason people seem to experience slowness – especially on larger databases.
4. Verify that your option for “SQL Recall: Statements to Save” is set to a reasonable size. Toad has to read and parse the XML file /user files/SAVEDSQL.XML every time it starts-up. XML by nature is not too brief, so having a large saved statement size can easily result in an overly big XML file. You may even need to truncate or replace that XML file if your initial setting is too high and results in too big a file.
5. Watch out for “network drives”!!! If you have network drives in your Windows path, SQL path, or any of the Toad options that write to files – and especially the ones that do so automatically at timed intervals (e.g. save settings every, backup editor every, etc) – then you’re just asking for things to run slowly.