Toad's new Action Palette is a powerful and versatile tool that will change the way in which many day to day actions are carried out in Toad. Its main strengths lie in the centralization of the export functionality and consistency in command-line scheduling. In prior versions of Toad, exporting data and DDL scripts was manageable from several disparate menus, tool icons and windows in Toad. This was potentially confusing and led to the realization of the Action Palette, where not only is exporting done via an easy-to-use interface, but any particular action item becomes an object in itself, and all actions can be run from the command line.

Actions can be organized into sets so the user can run an entire Action Set consisting of many actions. For example, you can export DDL for all objects in a schema, export all data as insert statements for all tables and views in that schema, zip all resulting files from the previous two exports, upload the zip file to an FTP server, then email another user to let them know that the backup has completed and that the files are ready on the FTP server.

Toad Group Policy Manager

The Group Policy Manager is a separate application that allows administrative users to further manage various features within Toad. Many items in Toad that are not connection-dependent can now be administered through TPM. Two categories of items are now configurable: Options and Windows.

Some managed items in the TPM Editor

The administrator can configure any Managed Item to restrict a user to a pre-defined setting, publish a preferred setting on every start-up but allow user customization, or retain user settings between start-ups.

Customizable Server Login Window

With more users added to Toad, the server login screen can become cluttered and confusing. By adding customizable columns, logging into the db and starting a session need not be an adventure, as users are able to sort by the new columns and create a login tree structure that is clear and concise.

Simply drag column headers to the upper pane to create a structured login tree

ToadTips

The Toad development lab is constantly working on how to best address the users' most pressing needs, so we've come up with an exciting and timely help solution: ToadTips. Context-sensitive tip dialogs are available for the more common Toad items and will appear the first time a window is launched. ToadTips is a dynamic, growing, intelligent and immediate help system for novices and veterans alike. We are striving to make ToadTips detailed, yet more lightweight and accessible than the main Toad Help.

Push the button...get some help

An ever-growing enterprise, ToadTips can be configured to automatically update every month

Can't quite remember how to set that watch while debugging a procedure? Just hit the information button and Toad will present you with the basic steps. Don't need ToadTips? Seasoned users can turn ToadTips off but can recall them anytime with the push of a button, or turn them on altogether under the Help menu

Smart Watches

The "Watches" tab in the Editor will now feature the ability to enable Smart Watches, which will split the tab and populate the right hand side according to the content of the active function or procedure. Smart Watches allow dragging of an entire structure (such as a record) or just an element of a cursor (i.e. myrecord.item).

Click here for a video demonstration of basic debugging functionality.

Note the ability to drag and drop from the Smart Watches pane

Other Notable Features

Master-Detail Browser

The new tree view in the Master-Detail Browser better illustrates table relationships

Database Monitor

Right-click on a color band to see the max value of any monitored metric

Compare Data

Easily populate the values for "Data Source 2" with a few mouse clicks

Data Grid "Save As"

New look for the "Save As" dialog

---

For questions or comments on this site: webmaster@toadsoft.com
All content Copyright © 2006 Quest Software, Inc. All rights reserved.