Oracle SQL Developer Reviews

I noticed that many of the small features are the biggest time-savers like:

• ‘Copy Selected Column Header(s)’ in the data grid
• Persistent highlighting of rows or cells in the data grid
• Search-and-replace with its smart options
• History (of statements and files)
• Splitting windows and document groups, pinning

Personally, being a nosey person, I love the Statements-Log Window, which shows every command SQL Developer sends to the database.

I have used it for three years.

Deployment was the easiest I ever encountered:

1. Unzip
2. Optional: find ide.conf, set the language to ‘en’
3. Optional: change NLS settings
4. Ready

Version 4.1.3 64-bit is very stable.

I had some problems with an older version freezing several times a week, but that was about two years ago and has hardly ever happened since.

Technical support is excellent. There’s the fast track via Twitter, but most of the time, I found the answer on Jeff Smith’s blog or Oracle Tech Net (OTN) before making a fool of myself by asking. Jeff has solved many of my problems “by unsent messages”. ;-)

You get very fast support on OTN or Twitter.

In different projects, I used to use TOAD and PL/SQL Developer.
One of my customers decided he didn’t want to spend any money on tools, so SQL Developer was my choice... I guess I have to be grateful :)

Initial setup was very easy, see above.

I tried Raptor ages ago (and didn’t like it at all), but now I am a converted SQL Developer enthusiast.

Read Jeff Smith’s blog. If you think a feature should be there, investigate. Quite likely, it’s already there; maybe you just overlooked it. If it’s not, open a feature request at sqldeveloper.oracle.com. Learn a handful of shortcuts (or two), it will improve your efficiency enormously.

I use the product, and the many aspects of it, because it covers everything from querying a database to monitoring to making a conceptual model to getting the model from the database and producing diagrams. It has many uses.

If you make it the tool you use, everyone can talk the same "language" in terms of the tool and the use cases. Once you know it, how to use it, you can tell the whole organization how a given task will be done.

You can install it on every platform. It just works. The other thing is that it's free. And Oracle is committed to the development of the tool, so it has been improving.

There is room for improvement in the Real Time SQL Monitoring.

It's more stable sometimes and less stable other times. I have used it on Windows, Mac, and Linux. It's variable, it's not the same stability. I think that can be improved on.

It can be used by many because it's mainly a client-server.

When I have had a problem I have gone to blogs or developers' sites for answers. I have not submitted a formal case to Oracle Support.

Developer is centered on Oracle. I have the need now to monitor a much larger diversity of things. We are talking about monitoring cloud infrastructure where you have machines, where you have many other things, apart from the development. Also, SQL Developer is backed by Oracle, it's free, and it accomplishes what we need to be done.

My most important criteria when selecting a vendor are, first, the vendor's reputation, and then the feedback I see from other users.

It's very simple to set up.

It's free.

In terms of advice, I would first ask you what you are expecting from the tool and, if it is in the scope of Oracle SQL Developer, I would recommend it.

I rate this solution at nine out of 10. It accomplishes what I expect. It's a nine and not a 10 because, it needs better real-time monitoring of development.

The most valuable features are being able to see all of the database objects – every single one of them – within each schema; being able to edit them; and being able to create objects. My whole job is done in there.

The solution I've created is revenue forecasting and our organization goes to Wall Street with the earnings call, with the forecast. So it's very valuable to the finance department.

I would say the layout should be improved. I've also have used PL/SQL Developer, and I like the layout, the landscape, of that application better than SQL Dev. Even though, in SQL Dev, you can highlight every single view and save the DDL, where you can't do that in PL/SQL Developer, the layout is what I would suggest as far as an area with room for improvement.

SQL Developer is very stable; never had an issue.

I only work on a Lenovo Windows machine. I don't work on Apples. I don't know if it's scalable there or not.

I have used technical support for this solution and they get back within 24 hours with a user-friendly answer. It's very good.

The company actually was using Toad, by Quest, and it's very expensive. It's user friendly but a developer shouldn’t need a super user-friendly solution. Also, SQL Developer's free; it comes with the install, the Oracle client.

When I’m selecting a vendor such as Oracle, the most important criteria is look for is reliability.

I installed it: downloaded, installed, configured; very easy.

I chose this product because it has a solution for all our needs, such as reporting, the PI, the development, the jobs themselves run on/out of the Oracle database. It was the total solution.

Read as much as you can. Just use it. I've been doing this for 25 years, so it's very easy to me. The more you do it, the easier it is.

It's just the best out there.

Export option on query results.

Faster access to DB tables.

Could be made to load faster.

Five years.

No.

No.

No.

Good.

Good.

Yes.

It was easy.

Good.

Good.

No changes required.

No.

Off the top of my head (I don't use it that often):

• Included Oracle SQL Developer Data Modeler. No PL/SQL IDE has such modelling capabilities, as far as I know. This is a killer feature for me.
• Database Export
• Database Diff
• Debugging capabilities

Off the top of my head (I don't use it that often):

• Just copy IntelliJ's IDEA for PL/SQL
• Projects - there are none and are much needed
• More code formatting options
• To be able to handle db object scripts that end with /
• File browser
• Filtering
• Favourite locations
• Versioning is there, check. But it sucks a lot, double check. Maybe except SVN.

It's getting better with every release. I would have rated it much lower a couple of years ago. With Oracle's resources, it could be much much better.

I have used this solution for eight years.

It is not very stable on MacOS, but it's much better on Windows I think.

I haven't used customer service.

I haven't used technical support.

IDE help is there, but it could be much better.

I did and still haven't fully switched to Oracle SQL Developer.

Setup is piece of cake. Various options are well hidden in settings, but the search helps a lot.

An in-house team implemented it.

It's free. The required time investment and change of thinking while using it is too much for me, anytime I seriously think about switching to Oracle SQL Developer as my main tool for PL/SQL development.

Invest enough time beforehand so you would fully understand how Oracle SQL Developer works and behaves in some situations. It is a very powerful tool, but sometimes it "works in mysterious ways", just like any Oracle's desktop product. (JDeveloper is the best example.)

The primary use case is developing and maintaining databases.

Maintaining databases is the most valuable feature in Oracle SQL Developer. It's also easy to use, fast, and intuitive.

I would like to see better tuning modules. It could also be more intuitive, easier to use, not so complicated finding the things you need to do, and support background processes better.

It's not so stable. Sometimes it crashes, and the connection to the databases is bad. 

The scalability is very good. It can scale out, up.

When selecting a vendor the most important criterion is that they are professional.

I rate this solution at six out of 10 because there are better tools that I am using. One of them is Toad, from Quest Software. Toad is more intuitive, easier to use, doing better work, and has more features.

I prefer Toad. But if it is a question of budget, it's better to use SQL Developer.

Database querying, curating scripts, and database tuning.

We have a QA team and we don't want to buy a special product for them just to query the database, so we use Oracle SQL Developer.

It's free.

If they had something on the Web then you wouldn't need to install it, just query, like Enterprise Manager.

It's stable. It's a little bit slower because of Java, but it's stable.

It's scalable.

We used to use SQL *Plus, but we needed something with more of a GUI for users who are not technical users.

When selecting a vendor the most important criterion is the price.

Setup is very easy.

This was the only free solution we evaluated. And it belongs to Oracle so that was good for us.

Toad is much faster to use. It's not Java which takes a lot of time to query and create things. You just install it on Windows and it works perfectly. Much better than the Java.

Just try it. It's very easy.

Using execution plan, I am able to do lots of query tuning.

• Easy to use
• Nice interface

Execution plan.

Because it is in Java, sometimes Java crashes the product, and of course there is the total dependence on Java.

I have never stressed the product to find out.

I have never needed to contact technical support.

I used Embarcadero and Toad. I gave up both because one is for every kind of database (I do not believe in this) and the other is only for Oracle, and its IDE is not good.

The initial setup is always a problem, it cannot find the Java SDK.

I have never paid for it, I use open source.

In Brasil, only big companies can use Oracle because of the price. I prefer NoSQL and open source databases.

 Embarcadero and Toad.

Take care during the initial setup and have patience. It can be too heavy and eat your memory.