Dell has released Toad for Oracle 12.0 which provides developers and DBAs with a key new capability - a seamless connection to the Toad World user community so they will no longer have to exit the tool and open a browser to gain access to the community. Toad is the foundation of Dell Software’s database development and administration product family.
“The actual strength of the product has always been the input of users,” John Whittaker, senior director of marketing for the Information Management Group at Dell Software, tells DBTA. The community has grown to over 3 million, more users in fact than license the actual Toad product, says Whitaker. With the Toad World community now linked into the product itself, Dell expects to drive greater efficiency for users because they will be able to gain access to best practices and answers to their questions regarding everyday challenges such as coding errors and database performance issues more easily. The new ability to access the Toad World community from within Toad enables database professionals to browse, search, ask questions and start discussions directly in the Toad forums, all while using Toad. “The ability to leverage 3 million other users and to be able to stand on the shoulders of the whole community is incredibly new and exciting and totally different than what anyone else is doing in the space,” says Whittaker.
Additional features in the 12.0 release include the Jump Search capability whichprovides rapid automated search, so users get context-sensitive help on Toad or Oracle topics inside or outside of Toad, even if they don’t know where to look. Users can type in the relevant search text, or go directly from an Oracle error message and jump to any Toad window or menu item, the Toad World community forum, or a support article to find what they need to solve their problem quickly.
Another new feature, Multi-Schema Compare, allows fast simultaneous comparison of multiple schemas in source and destination environments, such as schemas in the database that need to be compared across both test and production environments so that users don’t have to select individual schemas.
In addition to a Toad World Repository, which allows Toad for Oracle users to collaborate through script and file sharing via a secure public repository, there is also a Private Script Repository that provides a secure, private repository for teams to share scripts and interact with the script’s owner to provide feedback, questions and comments, resulting in higher code quality across the development team, and enabling the assurance of privacy that is required by government organizations and others.
The MyToad (remote script execution), which was first available in the Toad 11.6 release, provides users more flexibility byallowing database professionals to execute scripts and perform actions in Toad using a web-based GUI from any mobile device or home computer.
The new release also provides support for Microsoft Team Foundation Server 2012, the collaboration platform supporting Microsoft’s application lifecycle management solution, says Whittaker. “Toad is going to continue to be compliant with the systems that our users want to utilize in their environment. We have always played nicely with multiple vendors in the space.”
Toad for Oracle 12.0 will be available on Thursday, June 20 from Dell Software.