Next week the annual ODTUG conference will be held in New Orleans. I’ll be attending sessions and visiting vendor booths in order to stay current with the database DBA and development markets (more developer oriented at this particular show). I’ll report my findings and things of interest next week. I especially hope to corner some Oracle folks on the 11g R2 beta – which I’ve already heard rumblings for.
Of course Toad 9.6 is still relatively quite new, but we’ll also be pre-discussing some Toad 9.7 directions – as well as showcasing some of those features that have already been completed in the beta program (licensed Toad customers can join the Toad beta program for free by subscribing to the “Toad for Oracle Beta” Yahoo discussion group). The only requirement is that you are current on your Toad maintenance, which Toad verifies by checking for a current release on your PC. So this is not a way to get free upgrades. J
I think the most exciting thing for our booth will be to show people this year’s official new Toad bundle – “Toad DBA Suite for Oracle”. For one very reasonable price, this bundle includes all the best tools that Quest has to offer: Toad for Oracle Xpert (includes Quest SQL Optimizer for Oracle) with the DB Admin Module, Toad Data Modeler for ER diagramming, Benchmark Factory for stress testing, and Spotlight for Oracle – a client licensed version that permits users to connect to an unlimited number of databases (just one at a time though). I honestly believe the Spotlight alone in this bundle justifies the cost – with all the other great stuff essentially being free. If you’ve not seen this bundle yet – please do stop by our booth for a live demo.
Finally, I’m sure some people will be attending Sue Harper’s (Oracle product manager for SQL Developer) sessions to see what if anything their latest release has to offer. Don’t worry though, I’ll be there taking ample notes too to cover all our Toad customers’ needs. We don’t want to have them offer you anything we don’t or can’t. Myself – I’m hoping to continue to see SQL Developer discussion forum entries such as the following:
I’m the first to embrace competition as being good for customers – I just like to stay on the winning side of that equation J