"Previous SQL", "Next SQL" buttons

[Patrick Holmes]

I create files of SQL statements. I frequently accidentally type or which triggers the "Previous SQL" or "Next SQL" behavior. This constantly causes me to get confused and have to re-do work. I haven't figured out what exactly this does, but I always seem to have to redo some work. My question is: Is there a way to disable this feature? In 15 or so years, I've never found it useful and its only caused me trouble.

(I wish I understood the feature better. This is the only explanation I found in the user guide: "At the right side of the window you see two buttons that allow you to navigate through all SQL statements that you have entered in the SQL Window. This way you can quickly re-execute statements entered previously.") Perhaps there is a more detailed explanation elsewhere? I did not find it in the forum.)

thanks
pat holmes

 

[Marco Kalter]

You can go to Preferences > Key Configuration and assign keys to "SQL Window: Next SQL" and "SQL Window: Previous SQL" that you cannot press by accident.

 

[Patrick Holmes]

Of course! Thanks!
(I was away from IPC/TeamHealth and Oracle development for about two years, terminated after an acquisition, but recently brought back for some consulting. I still *love* this product. Every day it seems that I am reminded of or find one elegant feature or another in your product! I wish I could find another job managing an Oracle shop, so I could get you some more users!)

 

[Jeff Kandt]

I recently figured out that there's a bug in the implementation that makes recovering from an unintentional Ctrl-Up much more confusing than it should be.

When you're working in a window with an execution history of a couple of statements, and are now making additional new changes in the window which have not yet been executed, if you hit Ctrl-Up either intentionally or not (for me, usually NOT), you would expect it to bring you back to the most recently executed statement, but it doesn't. It brings back the one BEFORE that.

What this means is that if you try to get back to where you were by hitting Ctrl-Down once (which makes sense -- I accidentally hit Ctrl-Up once, I should be able to hit Ctrl-Down once to reverse that mistake), it doesn't work. To fix the mistaken Ctrl-Up, you have to hit Ctrl-Down TWICE.

I'd propose that when there have been changes to the SQL in the window since the last execution, Ctrl-Up should take you to the MOST RECENT executed statement. Then a Ctrl-Down would always reliably reverse a Ctrl-Up.

 

[Jeff Kandt]

Oh, and I just realized an even worse problem that makes it impossible to recover:

Again, in the same situation when you've got unexecuted/unsaved changes in the window, if you hit Ctrl-Up and then GOD FORBID you change the text in the window in any way, even if you type a single character because you were typing fast and didn't notice right away, you're screwed. You can't get back to what you were working on no matter how many times you type Ctrl-Up/Down or hit the blue arrows -- it's gone forever.

 

[Patrick Holmes]

Thank you Jeff Kandt for figuring out why it was so confusing for me! Given that I never have used this feature (on-purpose), I have changed the key configuration to