There are many hundreds of interesting blogs in the Oracle Database space to choose from. I’m happy to say that about 300,000 of you spent at least a couple of minutes on my blog in 2013. In case you didn’t have a chance to read all 105 or so new posts, I’ll share with you the highlights.

Before you run away screaming, thanks for hanging out with us in 2013 and we look forward to a very exciting 2014!

In no particular order…

Oracle SQL Developer v4 Is Finally Here

Back in July, we announced that the latest version of SQL Developer was finally available…as a beta. There must have been a lot of you excited to see this. 90 or so of you tweeted it, more than a hundred of you left comments. Obviously it was a big release, and it needed a lot of help from you all to identify bugs, shortcomings, and tweaks to make the official release a success.

10 Things You Probably Didn’t Know about SQL Developer

I’ve been experimenting with SlideShare a bit this year and this post was a chance for me to see how far I could go with it. Interestingly enough, both the post and the slideshare upload were both viewed about the same number of times.

This post highlights a few things that I find most SQL Developer users aren’t aware of, like that SQL Developer IS NOT just for developers.

Locks and Killing Sessions

Very simple post – how to find an offending session and Murder, Death, Kill it ๐Ÿ™‚ This post also has a bonus video of one of my favorite songs of the ’90s.

Die! Or How to Cancel Queries in SQL Developer

Y’all like killing things apparently. This post highlights why using the OCI Thick driver support in SQL Developer (if available!) can be helpful when trying to cancel a query.

SQL Developer and the Command Line Interface

One of the most frequently requested feature requests, we implemented a complete interface for command-line calls in version 4.0. We have many features to add to the interface, but out of the box you can now run your reports from the command-line and generate HTML pages. I think this will be a big thing going forward.

SQL Developer and the Diagnostics Pack

Sure to be a hit with developers and DBAs alike, in version 4.0 you can now work with your snapshots, baselines, AWR, ADDM, and ASH reports and interfaces.

How to Compare Code in SQL Developer

This post is pretty self-explanatory: how to use SQL Developer to compare your SQL and PL/SQL code – a side-by-side editor with line differences highlighted. Someone told me in a tips and tricks presentation at KScope13 that we couldn’t do that, and I couldn’t help but show him how wrong he was ๐Ÿ™‚ He was a very good sport and mentioned seeing this feature justified his entire trip to New Orleans. Me = ‘happy PM.’

How to See Two Tables (or any other object) at Once

A core feature of SQL Developer that many of you haven’t mastered. Learn how to take advantage of document tab groups and you’ll boost your productivity – guaranteed.

And last but definitely NOT least…

SQL Developer 4 is Live and 10 Reasons to Upgrade Today

It’s always fun to announce new products and product updates. We officially released v4.0 earlier this month. This post tells you why you should upgrade to the latest and greatest version – assuming that you haven’t already done so ๐Ÿ™‚

Author

I'm a Distinguished Product Manager at Oracle. My mission is to help you and your company be more efficient with our database tools.

3 Comments

  1. I’m excited about something I used today: comparing explain plans side-by-side. Once you pin an explain plan in the code editor, you can click and compare any additional explain plans, renaming them for clarity if you wish, instead of using the default “Explain Plan”, “Explain Plan 1”, “Explain Plan 2” labels. You can collapse and expand the access and predicate information independently in comparison mode, too!

  2. Prasanna Peshkar Reply

    Yes, These are certainly the favorite posts of any SQL Developer user. I just want to add one more in it and that is Reordering Columns. This one is really useful as user can avoid scrolling to get to the column when looking at a table or view’s data. By the way, I just love this tool so much that I think I am the only person on this planet which like all the features of SQL Developer. I think for Oracle user SQL Developer is everything. It is the preview of life’s coming attractions.

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