There are some bugs in the new PL/SQL Developer:

* The effect of the checkbox in View --> Single Document is reversed. When checked, the window tabs show up.

* Menu items sometimes show disabled when they are actually clickable (and, actually, you are able to click on them). Example: The "new window" menu items consistently look disabled even when it is legal to create new windows.

* I have not been able to get the "complex variable" tooltip to display. It seems to be somewhat restricted (e.g., it does not pop up for cursor variables). And I'm not sure if it works when the variable is a collection of records (type t_record_vars is table of t_record_var).

In addition, an urgent request: Most applications that have a ribbon include a "Home" toolbar that groups the most useful commands together. PL/SQL Developer does not have that, which makes it infinitely frustrating to have to hunt for commands through the toolbars--which are almost, but not quite, organized the way the menus were.

And, please, in future releases, is it possible to beef up the core features? It feels like most of the improvements in the last few releases have been "window dressing", or else they just incorporated functionality already available via existing plugins.

Here are some suggestions:

* Better support for partitioning and sub-partitioning, including partitioned indexes. The dialog boxes in Oracle SQL Developer are so much better.

* Better support for the DBMS Scheduler. For example, the ability to run a chain immediately; the ability to force-drop a job; the ability to specify time zones when scheduling a job. Nice to have: a visual representation of scheduler chains.

* Support for new Oracle 11g/12c features, like in memory tables and domain indexes.

* Better diagramming, with the ability to customize the appearance of all diagram objects with one click, and the ability to set preferences on the diagram so you don't have to go through the customization process every time.

* In the Query Builder, better support for nested queries and sub-queries (Note: this is based on my experience with PL/SQL 11; maybe things have improved in 12). I don't use the query builder much, but when I do, it is usually in order to visualize a complex query. When half the query is dropped, it sort of defeats the purpose.

* One long-standing requests: In the Compare User Objects window, the ability to filter objects before opening the window. If your schema contains lots of objects, this window takes a very long time to show up. Alternatively, you could paginate the list of objects that are displayed. For reference, the Oracle E-Business Suite schema contains 180,000+ objects. This may be an extreme case, but even a schema with 200 objects takes a few seconds to display.

Bonus features:

* A DB instance view like the one in Oracle SQL Developer. It is so useful when monitoring performance.

* I was able to customize the Sessions window to add some useful detail tabs, like: a single-record view of the session information; list of sessions blocking the highlighted session; list of sessions blocked by the highlighted session; information from v$session_longops; the list of *open* cursors held by the session; etc. Surely I'm not the only one to find these tabs useful...

Overall, PL/SQL Developer is still my preferred tool for Oracle development, but it would be SO much more useful with some improvements.

Thanks,
Ara

Thanks for your feedback. We'll look into these items.

Another bug:

When defining columns in the Edit Table window, PL/SQL Developer uses quotes to preserve the case of the column names. But the implementation is buggy. Here is a full test case:

1. Open the Edit window for table T.
2. Add a column named x_ABC. Click Apply.
3. View the DDL using dbms_metadata. Note that the column name is "x_ABC" (case sensitive).
4. In the Edit window, rename the column to X_ABC. Click Apply. Get ORA-00955: Name is already used by an existing object. SQL is "create table..." (i.e., PL/SQL Developer is trying to create the table instead of altering it).
5. Click on "View SQL". You will see the "create table" statement, not the "alter table" statement.
6. Still in the Edit window, edit the column name to be Y_ABC. Click on "View SQL". The statement is: alter table T rename column x_abc to Y_ABC; (no quotes, wrong casing).

We'll check it out.

I'd like to add somethins as well to this thread:

1) Input/Output performancese actually not good at all. I'm using the software over VPN and the difference with other platforms (Toad, SQLDeveloper .. ) and even with the software I develop by myself are so evident. The problem regards fetching query result, recovering dbms_output strings and retrieving any metadata information (TABLE, VIEWS, PACKAGES...). I don't know if there may be a really small buffer or something else causing this.

2) When running multiple instances of the program I get acces violation dialog box on one of the open windows. I use to run multiple istances of the program configured on "Dual Session" mode. I think the problem may depend on concurrency (saving preferences file or shared memory probably), because the window where I get the error is generally one that is in idle from a while.

[quote]1) Input/Output performancese actually not good at all.[/quote]
In 2012 (!), I have suggested a performance optimisation for the dbms_output part of this issue: Lines written using dbms_output takes a very long time to fetch.
Marco stated at the time that this was on the list of enhancement requests, so hopefully it will be solved sometime this decade

Yeah, I have added this to the list of enhancement requests - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bXd8x-YrGAE