Re: RE: TOAD vs PLSQL Developer vs SQL Developer

 Message from: sanjayvadher  day I was told I could get 2 copies of Toad.

LOL!  I think that was everyone's favorite new feature when I got licenses
here.  :)

Secondarily, being able to customize the GUI for my BAs is really huge. 
They don't need and don't want to see anything but tables and indexes in the
SB.  Features like that, which on the surface seem only to cater to the "my"
trend in software these days, can have real time savings for us.

They're also interested in the beta's ability to customize the schema lists
in the SB.  Our dev DB has almost 62000 objects -- why should my team need
to wade through all of that just to see what they need?  Toad let's 'em, and
it's getting even better.

I'm picky.  Picky, picky, picky.  I took 6 months to research what TV I
wanted.  Nearly as long to find the best Editor font.  There's a reason I've
been using Toad since pre-Quest v4 days -- It's Simply The Best™.  [queue
lame Tina Turner soundover here]

I'll stop now before someone tells me to take it to the Toad Advocacy list.

Rich -- [TeamT]

Disclaimer: Clay Matthews was just issued his 2011 Bear Tag.




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Author: Deborah Flad
Date: Thu Jan 20 04:02:45 PST 2011




 

Few years ago I had to justify desire for Toad w/DBA module. Were already paying
for Oracle OEM and PL/SQL Developer and O-SQL-Devel was available. Did some
routine work using all three and why each was ranked 1(best)..3(worse).
Explained how excellent interaction was with Quest Support and Toad Community.
Still cost of buying “something we already had” was biggest concern
of upper mgmt so I got a “no”.

Then using PL/SQL Devel late one day I was working with MLogs and MViews as part
of a Application/DB upgrade on reporting db. PL/SQL removed more than expected,
and our prod database got locked up. Took some time to wiggle everything
back(2000+ tables) during which many users were NOT happy having a unusable
prod system.

Upper Mgmt appeared at my door after all was fixed and explanation of
cause-effect-fix was written up and shared. She had one question: Would Toad
have done the same thing? My answer as “no” and I opened up Toad to
show them a few things. I had the “ribbet” turned on of course. J
Later that day I was told I could get 2 copies of Toad.


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Author: Gregory Liss
Date: Thu Jan 20 02:25:20 PST 2011
Back in the dark ages when I was a Toad user instead of a Toad developer, I had to do that cost justification as well.  I told the bean counters that Toad saved me x hours of time per week. Take x times my billing rate.  If that number is more than the cost of Toad then the ROI is there.  In my case, I could show that Toad saved the company it's cost in around 6 weeks.   Time is money.  




On Jan 20, 2011, at 3:25 AM, "Dunbar, Norman (Capgemini)"  I'll let you know how I go.  :)

I can't speak to PLSQL-D, but I can to SQL-D:

I use a lot of the various pieces of Toad for DBA work, PL/SQL and ad-hoc
querying.  There was easy justification for my license based on my previous
work experience as well as my proven relationship with the Toad Team (that
little "TeamT" thing).  My business analysts (well, OK, they're not really
"mine" per se) use only ad-hoc SQLs and a GUI browser for table definitions
and data.

For three years, they were stuck with the free SQL Duhveloper because that's
all I could justify based on their usage -- why would anyone need a
full-blown Toad for just that?

1)  The Java tool routinely blew chunks all over the place for us, causing
all manner of odd behavior in SQL-D.

2)  Inflexible GUI.  We're SQL-D -- you'll like the way we do things because
it must be the most efficient and user-friendly way possible.  Never mind
you folks with 13000 tables and 21000 indexes!

3)  BA runs a query in SQL-D and it takes 20 minutes.  Yay!  Let's just save
off those results....why is it frozen up now?  What do you mean it's
RERUNNING THE QUERY???!??  NOOOOOO!  THOSE RESULTS WON'T BE THE SAME FOR MY
TIME-BASED QUERY!!!!  Yes, sad but true.  Let's just send all of our queries
to the DBA so he can run them in Toad because it's tons faster and accurate.
 Yay for the DBA...

4)  Time for solo DBA to manage 7 installs of that tool when I should be
spending that time castigating people for running said ad-hoc SQLs instead. 
See also point #1 again.

The buy in was when my boss had the most trouble with SQL-D.  That made Toad
an easy sell to our CIO.  Had the licenses the next day.  :)

I asked for feedback after an hour long hands-on training session and giving
them a week to use Toad.  One was "F8 rocks!  MUCH better than the way
[SQL-D] does it!", which then prompted others to try it out -- a few more
came to the same conclusion.  One didn't like the layout of the SB.  So we
changed it!  And to be fair, one didn't care which tool they used because
they hardly needed to query our Oracle DBs.  (I made a special note about
that guy...)

I'm lucky to work for a place that provides the tools we need to do our jobs
in the "best" way we can.  To that end, Toad is a perfect fit.

But since my beer's gone, I'm shutting up now.

Enjoy!

Rich -- [TeamT]

Disclaimer: I'm not a paid shill for the wonderful Toad for Oracle product.




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Author: Richard Squires
Date: Wed Jan 19 19:57:46 PST 2011
 I'd live without it, life just wouldn't be so much fun. The difficulty is that in order to "Make the case that you do x, y and z with TOAD every day" I would also need to show how I couldn't do that using one of the other alternatives. It's very hard to quantify "it's just easier" in terms that wouldn't baffle the people that make the money decisions.

I'll let you know how I go.  :)

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Author: Bert Scalzo
Date: Wed Jan 19 17:43:10 PST 2011




 

Just a thought to help those who have to make such an argument. I’ll bet
most have not pitched MS Office to use Open Office or Lotus Symphony (two free
office clones). And I’ll bet that most doing .Net work are probably using
MS Visual Studio and not Sharp Develop, C Sharp Studio nor Mono Develop. The
point being that we all routinely pay for tools we need to do our jobs –
and justify the expense many different ways. Think of TOAD the same way. Make
the case that you do x, y and z with TOAD every day and thus cannot live without
it. That’s probably more relevant than what we might do above and beyond
those other tools and that you might not use …..


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Author: Jeff Smith
Date: Wed Jan 19 15:47:35 PST 2011




 

No worries, and I always assume folks are American until they say otherwise, so
we’re even.


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Author: Richard Squires
Date: Wed Jan 19 15:47:35 PST 2011
Ooops, should point out I'm working in Aussie Dollars.

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Author: Jeff Smith
Date: Wed Jan 19 15:20:06 PST 2011




 

I might be able to help you with some documentation if you want to email me
personally.

[email protected]

Also, the base edition of Toad is a bit less than $1,000, not more than that.


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Author: Richard Squires
Date: Wed Jan 19 15:20:06 PST 2011
I'm sure this is a question many of you will have been asked over time and I'm once again being asked to justify the cost of Base TOAD ($1000+) over PLSQL Developer ($200) over Oracle's SQL Developer (Free).

Currently I use TOAD for 95% of my day to day development - Schema Browser and SQL and PLSQL in the SQL Editor.  But I do use PLSQL Developer for its Test Window and its Debugger as TOAD either doesn't do it (the Test Window) or doesn't do it as well (the Debugger...although I've not been back to the TOAD debugger for a while so maybe its more stable now).  And I use SQL Developer because I need to get familiar with it because eventually it's going to replace TOAD (and it didn't crash like my TOAD session did when I queried a Queue Table with an XML Type in it which I think has been fixed in a more recent version of TOAD hence why I am trying to justify upgrading).

So, has anyone produced a document recently that they could share?  Does Quest have their own comparison chart of features not included in other products, because people are going to be asked more and more why we would spend 10s thousands of dollars on TOAD when Oracle has their own free version.

Cheers

Richard

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