Oracle SQL Developer Reviews

I've actually been using a similar tool for probably 17 years, but we switched over about four years ago to SQL Developer. A lot of these features I had used previously but there are advantages to SQL Developer. I guess just cleaning the database, looking at the information about your objects and the database, doing data manipulation. That's what I use it most for. DBAs would use it a little differently, maybe, but for me, as more of a developer or business analyst, it's pretty simple, just kind of your gateway to the database.

The biggest thing is really the cost savings as opposed to using a competitor project or competitor application to SQL Developer. The competitors cost significantly more.

Since Oracle SQL Developer is free, we no longer incurred the cost of the previous tool. There was also benefit to our organization in that the SQL Developer community is very active and growing, so there is a lot of resources available to us.

There are a lot of options and I think, as with any tool, making finding those options the easiest would be something that that this tool could work on. Sometimes it kind of takes a while to go through and remember where different options are. I've seen as we've gone through different versions of the tool, they're continuing to get better at that.

There's always going to be streamlining, and one thing they could improve is the installation. Even though it installs easy, there is a lot of Java behind the tool. It seems like some of the Java is more memory-intensive. Sometimes I feel like the Java side of the tool kind of gets in the way.

I think I’ve been using it since 2012.

A consultant that started working with us knew part of the product team personally. I first got introduced to Jeff Smith, Chris Rice and others on the product team via Twitter. If you follow them and interact with them on Twitter, there's a lot of resources. Jeff Smith has a blog, where he has a lot of SQL Developer tutorials. Sometimes, I ask questions on those channels, and there's a Facebook page. I've searched a lot on the forums and they also have something called SQL Developer Exchange for requesting enhancements.

There's a variety of ways that I've reached out. I feel like it's a very active community, so a lot of SQL Developer users are willing to help each other. A lot of times, I start with the social media side.

There's really nothing that I think is lacking. I've been very active and very vocal. That's probably one reason why they reached out to me to get a better view. Sometimes I have worked through, "Hey, why does it work like this? Can this be changed?" There have been things that the product team has changed because of some of the feedback that I or my team has given, so we've had a really good experience working with them.

The decision to switch to SQL Developer was basically about the cost. We were using Toad, those products. I had been using it for 13 years or something. I had gotten so used to it, pretty much everybody liked it and we were productive with that tool.

When we started investigating SQL Developer, it was given to us kind of as a challenge: Is there anything that Toad did that is imperative to your job that SQL Developer does not do? We couldn't find anything. There were some differences to get used to, different shortcut keys and so on. Just like switching from a PC to a Mac, you get used to it and there's really nothing that it can't do. It's a great way to save a lot of money.

I was involved in the deployment. The harder part for us has been putting these on a shared terminal server which is not always what Oracle recommends. Sometimes, when working on those shared servers, there are certain versions of the Oracle client that are needed for different versions of SQL Developer. Sometimes we've had to take that extra step to upgrade the Oracle client, but overall it's a simple install. Most of our problems have been from, again, a shared environment perspective.

We looked at a few other products and there have been different consultants that have come into the company that might use SQL Workbench or PL SQL Developer, but I think in general most of us are just sticking with SQL Developer. I haven't done a full analysis, because there just hasn't been a need. There's not really been anything that, to me, has felt lacking.

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.)

For the last few years: Ctl + F7. That shortcut will format my queries the way I desire. This is especially helpful since I work with a query generator (OBIEE) and sometimes have to look at hundreds of lines of SQL. Formatting it helps me read the SQL. If I didn’t have this capability, I would format it by hand which would add time to my day.

At a prior organization, we had no reporting capabilities. Business Users would ask me to run reports for them. Since there were restrictions in other delivery mechanisms (think: web front end), I ended up creating SQL Developer Reports and then distributing those to the Business Users. This isn’t an ideal way to distribute reports, but it worked, and freed up my time to do other more important things.

Feature-wise, it has everything that I need. My only complaint over the years has been memory usage, which seems to improve with each release. I also understand that this may be out of the developer’s control (i.e. Java).

I have used this solution for 10+ years. I downloaded and used Project Raptor when it was first released.

Customer service has been most excellent. The Product Manager is on Twitter (and happens to be a friend), Jeff Smith. I’ve bothered Jeff myself and have watched him help others routinely via Twitter and his blog. I honestly can’t think of a better PM out there. Additionally, Kris Rice (also a friend) was one of two of the initial developers (if I remember correctly).

Technical support has been excellent. If Jeff (or Kris) can’t answer in 140 characters, he’s probably written it up as a solution for whatever ails you on his blog. I frequently go there to find answers before asking.

I would use Toad to monitor database sessions. It had a pre-built reporting solution for that. But Toad cost quite a bit of money. When SQL Developer (Project Raptor) came out, I installed it and built the same session monitoring reports there. No more worrying about cost.

Initial setup was very straightforward: Unzip, find the executable and go. I have it installed on Windows, Mac and Linux (Ubuntu, Oracle Enterprise Linux).

I did not really evaluate other options before choosing this product. I mainly used SQL*Plus and occasionally Toad.