Alternatives to Toad

Oracle's SQL Developer.

PL/SQL Developer from http://www.allroundautomations.nl/. Presented between a choice between Toad and PL/SQL developer, about half the developers prefer PL/SQL developer. I have to admit the code completion in PL/SQL developer is much better, but I still prefer Toad for the DBMS management functionality.

TOra is an another good option. I used the pre GPL version for years. It's a good simple SQL tool for Oracle.

It supports schema browsing, analyse plan, limited debugging plus all the stuff you'd expect.

I've used Squirrel-SQL (which is a Java/JDBC based program and will work with any OS or database that provides a driver) and the database development tools for Eclipse (Eclipse-DTP). Both are certainly sufficient for light database work. Both are free and open-source.

After trying other products for some months, I'm back to Toad.
And I have to admit that (IMHO, and for the type of use that I'm doing of it): I've found no alternative to Toad.

The indispensable features that are missing in other products are:

1. Speed. Toad is blazingly fast; SQL Developer starts to crawl if you open more than 2 or 3 connections. When you have to operate with time constraints, you really can't wait SQL Developer to open.

2. The "open a new window until commit" functionality (a new window is opened after an insert or update statement, and you are forced to commit or rollback). Really handy to avoid pending commits.

3. The "execute current statement" functionality (shift-F9). SQL Developer doesn't have it, or you are forced to select the query you want to execute.

I'm surprised that nobody has mentioned DbVisualizer yet. Our company has been using it for a few years and everybody seems happy with it. It's powerful, runs on multiple platforms (Java-based) and supports different database systems (Oracle, DB2, MS Access etc). It has a free version; a commercial version is available if you need more features.

I'll toss in my vote for SQLPal. It's free. Most of the features it has works really well (auto-competition has never seemed to work). I'm using it against a 10g database daily and it works great.

I've been using Golden from Benthic Software as a SQL*Plus replacement for a long time and love it.

http://www.benthicsoftware.com/products.htm

I would also recommend Oracle's SQL Developer, however I've found WinSQL to be quite good as well. SQL Developer is free and WinSQL has a community version that is quite robust, and works well against other platforms too (I also use it for working with Netezza).

I've used OraDeveloper by DevArt to connect to Oracle databases. It's nice because it plugs into Visual Studio in much the same way as the SQL Server databases can be queried through Server Explorer. It is not free, but in our case it came free with the purchase of OraDirect .Net, which is a new provider that allows Oracle to work with Microsoft's Entity Framework.

Having done 3 years in one job using TOAD, and now 5 years in current job using PL/SQL Developer, I would say overall TOAD is a better tool, but if you are specifically developing stored procedures in PL/SQL, PL/SQL Developer is better.

Don't forget get to set up the context sensitive help (under Help - HTML Manuals)

You could also use sqltools, which some of my colleagues prefer. I never got used to it, but looks powerful.

I use PL/SQL Developer for running multiple queries and stored procedure development, as it's rock solid, and you can kill the process via Task Manager, and get back all your windows upon starting up again. I use TOAD for browsing, as that functionality can't be beat. But it's flaky on me, hanging, etc, although that is probably my computer.. I would buy both. I have both open now.

For accessing odd sources (OSISoft PI, JDE on AS400, 4D, Access, Excel), I use Advanced Query Tool. It's great to be able to use SQL against an Excel sheet of a proposed table, to create your DDL.

I love Toad. I had to switch to Embarcadero's Rapid SQL for two months and it damn near killed me. So while I don't know of any products that are better than Toad, I can say without reservation that Rapid SQL is wholly inadequate.

We are using RazorSQL for Oracle and also DB2. It is low cost and has a ton of features.

PLSQL Developer very good for Oracle DBMS, specifically for Stored Proc, but not so well for the DBMS management.

Just to throw it out there - did you know you can grab the beta of Toad 4.1 and use that for free? The betas are always free to the public.

I've used Embarcadero DBArtisan (not free)

I thought it was good.

I second the SQL Developer comments. FWIW, the newer versions of Toad are much more stable than the golden oldies were. I'm using Toad 9.7 and it's quite good.

I'm using PL/SQL Developer, which I think one of the best oracle database tools, it's lite and fast, I have one copy in my USB flash to allow me to use it in any pc(you just copy it from the program files folder and place it in the flash and it will work fine).

Also I bought OraDeveloper from DevArt three months ago, it's has some good features, but it's slower than PL/SQL Developer and require .Net framekwork. but the good thing that it has direct connection to Oracle, so you can use it from any PC without requiring Oracle client to be installed.

Another tools is EMS SQL Management Studio for Oracle, which looks nice, and have some nice features specially with import/export from other format. http://sqlmanager.net/en/products/studio/oracle

and for free one you can use AnySQL Maestro, which has support for Oracle/MySql/Sql server and offer AnySql Maestro for free http://www.sqlmaestro.com/

I've tried most of the tools suggested above, and found that I prefer this one over all of them (including TOAD): SQLDetective

SQL Studio for Oracle is really nice...

Worked with PL/SQL developer. It rocks.