PLSD vs. TOAD - Thinking of buying one...

[pbrar]

I am evaluating for standardisation of Oracle Dev Tools where I work. We have used both PLSD & TOAD. I wanted to know the status of the following features that I was told are in TOAD to see whether they are, or will be offered within PLSD...
(for items that may be in future releases, some [approx.] timescales would be useful if possible).

1. ER diagrams - reverse engineering the database you are connected to, in order to show a diagrammatic view of the tables, their descriptions and their relationships.

2. Multiple sessions to multiple databases within the same instance of the IDE.
(I have checked the forum and it appears that you need to run multiple instances of PLSD to have multiple sessions to multiple DBs open, however I was wondering whether this facility is on the card for any future releases).

3. Hooking in to the Oracle TKPROF facility to get the timed-statistics from the trace file(s) produced when running SQL/PLSQL code - for analysis and fine-tuning of code.

4. Accessing Oracle 8/9 StatsPack features to get statistics for performance tuning of code/DB.

5. Accessing Oracle 10g AWR (Automatic Workload Repository - the replacement for StatsPack) for stats data and performance tuning of code/DB.

6. A concurrent licensing facility/feature/option.

I know TOAD costs a lot more than PLSD, but at the end of the day we have to see which app is best for the business, not which is cheapest.
Hence I'm asking - to gather information.

 

[tcogill]

Check out this list of comparisons...
http://www.orafaq.com/tools/table.htm

It's been my experience that TOAD has many DBA-ish functions, while PL/SQL Developer is more geared towards development. There is a lot of overlap in functionality.

For point #2, be careful what you wish for. I've used tools that allow connections to multiple databases, and before long it caused more trouble than it was worth. We eventually stopped the practice and started the program a 2nd time.

- Tim

 

[oraclelover]

Here is my view and opinion.

Some of those options should be in enterprise manager correct? I don't do DBA work so some of the things you want are different from what I need. Seems you are looking for a tool that washes dishes/cloths/cars/dogs/kids. I wish you luck.

I'm lucky enough to have both TOAD and PL/SQL Developer. Both are the latest versions. I'm a developer who does lots of PL/SQL and SQL writing. Hands down I would go with PL/SQL Developer. For code editing PL/SQL Developer is simpler/easier with an end result being more powerful. And it does all of this at less than a 1/10 the cost of TOAD. I say if you are willing to buy TOAD spend 150 bucks and get PL/SQL Developer as well. If you can affor 1 to 2k for TOAD why can't you also get a 150 copy of PL/SQL Developer. TOAD does have more tuning ability and a knowledge base. But these all come at extra cost. Again I have both and I use PL/SQL Developer every day I use TOAD maybe once every three weeks.

For #1 this is not that great in TOAD. Do this for more than 10 tables and it draws a ugly mess of lines all over the place and is horribly slow. I think it took well over an hour for me to do this on 100 tables. May of taken longer because I left for lunch and when I came back it was done. This would probably go the same for any ER diagram tool that you didn't break down into smaller sections. I think ERwin does a better job for this.

#2This is more of a lazy option in my opinion. You can open another instance and get same thing with less chance of running test code in production. Though I can see how if a user wants to do that go for it, but I don't think it makes PL/SQL Developer less useful by any means.

 

[oraclelover]

Not to ramble on any more, but thought this was one of those itmes that counts about a tool/company.
Good luck getting your voice heard when you want something fixed or added to TOAD. I have sent in comments over the years and I have yet to hear anything or see any of them implemented.

With PL/SQL Developer I asked about something and now I see it implemented within a resonable amount of time. Feels good to have your voice heard. For example copy directly to Excel was slow as hell. I asked about it they said we added to our to do list and bam now in 6.0 that is implemented. They will also tell you sorry can't happen rather then leaving you hanging for ever wondering if anyone even read your request.