Warren's Wishlist

[Warren Smith]

Hi Marco,

First of all, let me say that I believe this product is great. It's saved me so much time in developing oracle solutions. However, I do have a few [mostly minor] annoyances.

Handle EXEC procedure() from sql window

Handle bind variables gracefully from sql window. Behavior similar to sql*plus vars (&varname)?

F5 finds current query like F8 for explaining.

Better thread isolation so one slow window does not freeze PL/SQL developer. For example, when a connection for one window
needs to be reestablished, pl/sql dev is unsuable during the reconnect phase.

Asynchronous commit. When developing materialized views, commit is no longer an O(1) operation and can take awhile. Commit should work similar to any other operation and not halt the ui.

Macros don't seem to work correctly. Try creating a macro to replace all occurances of one piece of text with another [see bind issue above]. Macro does not capture clicks or selection of "Replace all"

Add hotkey or menu item to refresh cached data dictionary for smart completion.

Edit->Search Bar only enables search bar; it does not close it.

Add a "Save Session" item to File which creates a recovery snapshot. I've found this to be terribly useful to the point where I'll even open a modal box and kill pl/sqldev just so I can restore my session after a reboot.

Support for WHENEVER and VARIABLE commands in an sql window. They don't have to do anything, but should be at least differentiated from surrounding sql.

F5 "explain sql" does not work for CREATE TABLE AS or compount statements like ( SELECT 1 FROM DUAL ) UNION ( SELECT 1 FROM DUAL )

This one I can't pinpoint, but occasionally, pl/sql dev will lose it's idea of "current sql" and will omit the first character of the current statement when sending to Oracle. For example, given these two lines:

SELECT 1 FROM dual;
SELECT 1 FROM dual;

If I put my cursor on the second line and hit f8, pl/sql dev would highlight "ELECT 1 FROM dual;", which of course, is invalid and would not post. I can't seem to figure out what causes this, but the only remedy is to copy all text and paste into a new window as all further sql entered will have the problem.

 

[Marco Kalter]

Thanks for your feedback. I have added these to the list of enhancement requests.

 

[William Robertson]

Handle EXEC procedure() from sql window

EXEC[UTE] is surely a SQL*Plus thing so I'm not sure it belongs in an SQL window. The SQL equivalent CALL is supported of course - except the "auto-select statement" feature seems to lose track (as it does with BEGIN...END blocks), so once you have any PL/SQL on the page you have to highlight every statement manually which is a pain if you are used to just hitting F8. Normally I would execute PL/SQL blocks in a test window of course, but sometimes I'm trying to put together a demo and I want all the statements on one page.

 

[Marco Kalter]

The equivalent is indeed a BEGIN/END block:

begin
;
end;
/

This will work in the SQL Window.

 

[Warren Smith]

I'm aware of the workaround and use it daily. In addition to pl/sql development, I use pl/sql dev when debugging sql*plus scripts, and the EXEC shortcut would be a great timesaver.