Free tool used for Oracle Database development
November 01, 2017
Free tool used for Oracle Database development
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Overall Satisfaction with Oracle SQL Developer
SQL Developer is used by our ERP & BI Development and Support teams and our DBA team. It also is used on occasion by security and system administration folks. Programmers are looking at tables constantly. Having a graphic tool to do that makes the process quicker and easier. In the past some folks have used TOAD (which is a great tool), but over time SQL Developer has won out as Oracle has continued to add features. We just cannot beat the cost since it is free. Security and system administrators occasionally need to run scripts and SQL Developer provides a nice visual interface to do so. I am comfortable using the SQL*Plus command line.
- Easy to use, even if someone not worked in past with it and have experience using some other tool like TOAD. It's easy to work with it.
- It's connectivity and features with Oracle database is added advantage for users like monitoring SQLs, sessions and data modeling.
- Getting details about existing objects with their scripts and data. Its portability into different file system like Excel, text etc.
- Its connectivity to other databases and use of specific functions from it. Example: DB2.
- Running many SQLs in parallel from a number of open SQL sheets. TOAD has this feature, very useful to toggle between different tabs.
- SQL Developer is a free tool that comes with the licenses of Oracle Database, so it's quite inappropriate to talk about ROI of this software itself.
- SQL Developer is not a "you get what you pay for" product. Using it can cut out an entire line from your budget, so there is no comparison in that regard. We now only buy a few licenses for other similar tools and only when the user can prove SQL Developer doesn't meet the need.
- In some cases, new programmers come in that are not familiar with SQL Developer. People tend to like what is familiar, so there is some initial time spent learning the tool. But that is balanced out because it really is pretty intuitive.
There are a lot of products that allow us to work with databases, but most of them, even if they may be better than SQL Developer, have license costs, while SQL Developer is free. For example, Toad for Oracle is probably better than SQL Developer. It is more mature (first release in 1998), has a more captivating GUI and a better management of DBA tools. But it requires the product to be installed and is not free at all and there may not be enough good reasons to invest in it, while SQL Developer doesn't need to be installed and offers practically the same functionalities.