The release of Toad® for Oracle 9.7 brings an array of new features, allowing more empowerment to its users. The purpose of this site is to bring forth the latest improvements and to help the user discover the features. We would also like to mention the release notes and the Help documentation which is also a great tool for learning Toad. However, we do acknowledge the customer's anticipation of the product in which the 'Get to Know' page provides a quick walk-through of some of the innovative features introduced in Toad® for Oracle 9.7
Note: This tutorial /walk-through was written using Toad BETA release version 9.7.0.46.Return to Contents
Toad® for Oracle 9.7 now checks Oracle Client/Server versions for optimal use. This item can be disabled from Options|Oracle if necessary. If you are attempting to use an incompatible client/server combination, Toad will warn you when you try to start a new session.
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Because of FDCC (US Public Sector) requirements and general requirements related to roaming profiles, the need for Vista support, and so on, Toad has moved custom user files so that they are located in the Documents and Settings|User as they are in other Windows applications.
For detailed information on which user file is stored where, you can find a complete list in the Toad help file (toad.chm) under Properties Files (this topic is listed in the index).
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The old formatter used in Toad did not fully support Oracle 10g or 11g. In 9.7 this has been replaced by QP5. The new formatter creates similar formatting, it also includes support for Oracle 10g and 11g. In addition, template files can now be correctly saved to a different location.
In addition to this information, there is also a video demonstraton of this feature.
You can still select the option types you want to set from the left hand side, and make detailed selections on the right. A smaller window provides space to check your formatting on a piece of example code, so that you can preview your changes.
However, because of the new parsing, some things have changed, and differences will be created between saved files and files open and formatted with QP5. When loading a Formatter Plus options file, the new component preserves options as much as possible. If no exact match is possible then the following matches are made:
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Formatter Plus option |
converted as follows |
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Parenthesis "open and close brackets in stacked lists" on same line |
In the new group "Position around Multi-line Lists" a closely matching option is selected |
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Style of Parameter declaration and passed parameters |
Parameter declarations and Parameters list arrangements Wrap or Stack on 1 column, or Stack on Overflow on 99 colums |
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AND-OR and Plus-Minus-Mul-Div "operators right and aligned" |
"operators right" |
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AND-OR: Align top level OR or AND with keywords |
Not converted, but the user can select a new radio button:
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SELECT keywords left aligned |
Keywords aligned LEFT (DML statements tab) |
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SELECT align lists at column |
Middle margin (DML statements tab) |
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SELECT INTO style |
SELECT list arrangement (similar) |
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SELECT TABLE, ORDER BY, GROUP BY, RETURNING style |
Table Reference, ORDER BY and GROUP BY list arrangements (similar) |
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INSERT column values style |
VALUES list arrangement (similar) |
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Default list arrangement (Other Lists tab) set to Stack on Overflow |
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The Actions Palette has been removed and replaced by the AppDesigner. This feature expands Action sets into ToadApps,which you can use to more fully automate your repetitive tasks. Actions now include conditional logic and actionable queries.
Open the AppDesigner window from the Utilities | AppDesigner.
The Appdesigner is broken into three main areas:
There are several new actions for Toad 9.7. Several Toad functions have become actions, including Schema Compare, and HTML Schema Generation. You can find a full list of Actions in Toad by selecting Action Catalog from the Toad Help Index, or, as you are using Toad, look for this button in the status bar:
NOTE: The old lightning bolt button in the window caption(header) has been migrated to this snapshot button.
Toad 9.7 has added a new category of actions: control actions. These actions let you control the execution of actions within a ToadApp (previously called an Action Set).
Control actions include actions that allow you to specify conditional functionality. These actions can contain child actions, and include among many:
Using these control actions in combination with the Toad functionality actions, you can create very sophisticated mini-applications to control your routine processes. These apps can then be scheduled, run from the command line, and shared with coworkers to make working with Toad quicker and easier.
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The DB Admin Module and Toad DBA Suite include many features that are of special use to DBAs. In this release of Toad, we have made additions and upgrades that should make the workflow much easier for DBAs.
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In addition to this information, there is also a video demonstraton of this feature.
Oracle RMAN scripts can be challenging and time consuming, especially for less experienced DBAs and they wanted an easier way to create and maintain scripts. Toad 9.7 supplies basic scripts that can be copied, edited and stored for re-use. Also, Toad variables can be embedded into the RMAN script.
You can edit existing RMAN scripts and add and delete scripts to and from the scripts list from the Options|RMAN Templates page.
You can then generate RMAN scripts from the Database Browser.
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Oracle trace files have historically been difficult to examine. The Trace File Browser provides a way to display this information in a manner that is easy to read and easy to navigate so that problem areas can be quickly isolated.
NOTE: This feature is only available with the DB Admin option.
In addition to this information, there is also a video demonstraton of this feature.
The new Trace File Browser provides far more information than was previously possible. In addition, after you have browsed a Trace File, a Benchmark Factory project file can be pushed to Benchmark Factory for workload replay.
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In addition to this information, there is also a video demonstraton of this feature.
There have been some major enhancements to the Database Browser. You can now use it as a central point for your database administration. As before, you can navigate to every database simultaneously, and drill down into any of them to administer database and schema objects.
Now you can right-click on a database node and perform a number of additional administration operations. You can go directly to the:
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In addition to this information, there is also a video demonstraton of this feature.
The DB Health check window is an actionable item. It now displays as a tree view, and includes several new items for checks. These items include:
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Toad 9.7 has added several new features that are specifically useful to developers. These include support for Subversion in Source Control (See Miscellaneous Changes), Basic Code Refactoring, and Data Generation.
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Toad 9.7 adds basic code refactoring. Refactoring is a methodology to take you through clearly defined steps (each ideally verified by a pre-defined regression test) to make your code more maintainable.
In this release, we have added Extract Procedure. This involves selection of a correctly parsed block of code and extracting it into either a stored or local procedure.
Note: Other (very basic) forms of refactoring, such as renaming of local variables and changing case were already available in Toad before 9.7.
To use Extract Procedure, select a portion of code, right-click and select Extract Procedure:
The Extract Procedure dialog lets you choose what kind of procedure you want to create:
When extracting a procedure, the procedure is removed from the active code and then created as a separate stored or local procedure. The original code now looks like this, with a call to the new procedure included within it:
The new procedure will look like this:
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New to Toad 9.7 professional is a feature that provides a way to generate test data for your schemas and tables.
In addition to this information, there is also a video demonstraton of this feature.
Data generation is implemented in the following locations:
You can specify how Toad generates data.
In particular, you can specify:
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Schema Compare is one of the few windows in Toad that is not all or nothing within Toad Editions. With all of the editions, you can perform a standard Schema Compare using the Oracle Data Dictionary. With the DB Admin Module, you can also use schema definition files and perform synchronizations.
Schema Compare & Sync have been made actionable, and are available from the AppDesigner, or from the Window Snapshot button.
In addition, Schema Compare has been expanded for easier use. You can now add multiple target schemas to compare, while still being able to switch between two schemas. In addition, you can use either a live connection to a database which loads all DDL information as you go, or schema definition files. These files are encrypted, compressed files containing all the information about every object in a schema at a particular point in time. You may want to use a schema definition file to run a time-sensitive comparison, but something additional is that when they are used for a schema compare, they take much less time to process.
Switch the source schema with a target schema by selecting the target, right-clicking, and selecting Switch.
Several additional Quest products are closely integrated with Toad for Oracle.
For more information about integration of these products and others, see the Working with Other Quest Products section of the help file, or the version 9.6 Get to Know. In version 9.7, Benchmark Factory joins the integration family.
Benchmark Factory is a database performance and code scalability testing tool that simulates users and transactions on the database and replays production workload in non-production environments. This enables developers, DBAs, and QA teams to validate that their databases will scale as user load increases, application changes are made, and platform changes are implemented. Benchmark Factory is available for Oracle, SQL Server, DB2, Sybase, and MySQL.
Benchmark factory 
can be accessed from Toad:
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Third Party File Based Source Control now includes native support for Tortoise SVN. The Subversion implementation in Toad allows you to use the conventional file-based check-out and check-in via the Editor’s File Open button. All you have to do is browse to the working folder, select your file and open.
In addition, you can use Team Coding with Subversion as well. Full instructions on doing this are included on the AskToad wiki, under HowTo links.
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With version 9.7, Toad for Data Analysis is now a part of the Toad bundle. If you ever need to query a database on a different platform. With native support for Oracle, SQL Server, DB2 LUW & z/OS, MySQL and Sybase ASE and ODBC support for anything that has an ODBC driver (based on the 3.0 ODBC spec) you can always get to the data you need.
For detailed informationon Toad for Data Analysis, see the Toad for Data Analysis web site.
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