Laurent Schneider

Sometimes the simplest tricks just ease your life the nice way.

While typing code in TOAD, I just found out those two handy keyboard shortcuts

<CTRL> + . = Autocompletes tablenames
<CTRL> + T = Popups the list of column names

I want to select everything from emp and dept joined on deptno.

SELECT*FROM E<CTRL+.> e,D<CTRL+.> d 
where e.<CTRL+T><down><enter>=d.<CTRL+T><enter><CTRL+ENTER>

Especially useful when table and column is not EMP.DEPTNO but WWRTM_CUOTDSOTM_IWUWH_ML.H2OUUP2_NIAGASTSGM_IMUMTUCI

one colleague just showed me how to insert duplicate rows in a table that has a primary key.

create table t(x number primary key);[F5]
Table created.
insert into t values (1);[F5]
1 row created.
insert into t values (1);[F5]
1 row created.

Hey, what happened? It took me quite a while to figure out which feature of Toad was “allowing” this.

Let’s look at Toad.ini (or View - ToadOptions - Transaction)

[SETTINGS]
ALWAYSROLLBACK=1
THREADQUERIES=1

Which means, Toad is starting a separate session each time a query is run (by F5 for instance) and at the end of this child session, it rollbacks. This is not the default, but this is pure magic!

Let’s prove it :

select count(*) from t where x=1;[F5]

  COUNT(*)
----------
         0

1 row selected.

If you have receive ddl statements from your developer and you want to check if it matches the current state of the development database, because the developer have done a lot of change in a quick and undocumented manner, what are your options?

I found this handy feature in Toad :
1) I create my objects on a separate database with the ddl I received from development
2) I compare the schema they use with the schema I created in Toad
–> Database –> Compare –> Schema
I select the options I want:
–> functions, indexes, packages, procedures, triggers, tables, view
I select the Reference and Comparison connections/schemas. Then I click compare
3) I receive the result
(only) 29 differences
4) the real bonus, I receive a script to update the live data according to the script I received. Undocumented change should never happen, so I do some communication with the developers

drop index foo;
drop table bar;
alter table gaz drop column bop;
alter table gaz modify (quux null);

this is not going to be blind-executable, some change are simply impossible to implement, but for my little test, I was happy to discover that function

I have been using ERwin for this purpose before, but the version I have (4.1) is very buggy and does not support a lot of syntaxes (ex: deferred constraints, create view v as select cast(1 as number(1)) x from dual, etc…). Also ERwin can compare only with the current model, so no direct comparison between 2 database schema.

In the Metreon Theater, Quest announced toad 9. Steven Feuerstein presented one feature : Unit Testing in TOAD. Go to http://www.toadworld.com, unless you are a vi man