It’s time to go update your desktop copy of SQL Developer! We have some very important bug fixes for our community of Oracle Database users, developers, and DBAs!

SQL Developer 23.1 released on 19 April 2023.

Things you should know

This release is mostly all about bug fixes and providing a stable development environment for Oracle Database, mostly. The primary exception to that would be…

Parser updated for 23c Free Developer Release

You can start using the new 23c SQL and PL/SQL syntaxes without the parser getting ‘angry’ and you start executing these commands with no issues.

Reminder, we have a Docker and VirtualBox 23c Free Developer instance if you’d like to have a go at it.

There were approximately 35 bug fixes included in this release, but I’ll cover the top 2 reasons you’ll want to upgrade.

1. Code Insight/Completion Bug Fixes

This was inconsistent before AND items weren’t being sorted correctly. Those should now be working as expected.

Thanks to the community for reporting this and for their patience.

2. Windows File System Response Time Issues

There was a bug in Java that severely impacted the response time in SQL Developer whenever we went to the OS for various tasks. The Java team has produced a fix and that’s included in the Windows x64 distribution of 23.1 where we include the JDK.

This was apparently unique to Windows, but did not affect ALL Windows users.

SQL Developer Data Modeler 23.1

Continuing the theme, SDDM 23.1 delivers no new features, but does provide a couple of bug fixes.

Details can be found here –

What about the VS Code…stuff?

Our work on the next generation of SQL Developer continues. We’re about to make it available to our Oracle employees/staff as a preview before we release it for customers (Summer 2023)

Please bear with us, it takes time to build stuff, even when we’ve built it before!

thatjeffsmith
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.

22 Comments

  1. Avatar
    Bryan Mack Reply

    Since upgrading to 23.1, none of my postgres connections work. I have updated the JDBC driver. Have confirmed old versions of sql developer still work on the same machine with same credentials. This is something wrong with the way sql developer interacts with the database, it calls a password failure message. When doing a “test” it works, but when putting in a “connect” command, it fails. This is not good.

  2. Avatar
    Liam Donovan Reply

    Unzipped 23.1 (23.1.0.097.1607) with JDK 11 on Windows 10. A very useful means to run scripts across multiple DBs was to EZ connect directly from a SQL worksheet and run as script like:

    conn schema_name/””@”db_host_1:1521/service_name_1.com”
    @\script.sql
    conn schema_name/””@”db_host_2:1521/service_name_2.com”
    @\script.sql
    etc.

    In 23.1 it now does NOT connect at all. Is this an introduced bug?

    Pervious version (22.2.1.234.1810) works fine and so still using 22.2.

  3. Avatar
    Nigel Richmond Reply

    Jeff.

    Appreciate the bug fixes. However, I am seeing a potential bug with semantic analysis tips – I am seeing a “SELECT List is inconsistent with GROUP BY” tip on queries which are grouped correctly.

    e.g.
    select
    count(*)
    , branch_primary
    from
    deposits
    group by
    branch_primary

  4. Avatar

    Hi Jeff,

    Installed Sql developer 23.1 few days back. Was earlier using version 21.4.
    I have noticed a major regression in code completion insights behavior.

    When I press Ctrl+Space, it now takes lot longer to bring up the table names. 3-4 seconds.
    I also noticed a change in search behavior. In 21.4 only tables beginning with the characters I had typed were searched.
    In 23.1 its searching for all tables where those characters appear anywhere in the name.
    This is slowing down the search (according to me).
    This search behavior has made this feature unusable for us, as we have lot of tables in our database.

    Is there a way to return to the old search behavior of 21.4.

    • thatjeffsmith

      I just tested 22.2, and it works the same way there. I will check 21.4 in a bit.

      As a workaround, prefix your object name with the schema to limit the scope, and also make sure your data dictionary stats are up to date.

  5. Avatar
    Brendab Flanagan Reply

    Installed 23.1 and imported my connections when prompted from my 22 version – all worked a treat – however, it didn’t import my SVN connections from the “Versions” tab – no worries I thought – I will just export them from 22 and impor them – however that doesn’t work either (export works fine – when I try to import the OK button never enables on the import window) – I suspect it’s because the file format has changed between versions perhaps – and 23 doesn’t work with the different export that 22 creates.

    Not a massive issue – but would be nice if it brought forward that connection information too – or the import was fixed to understand the 22 Version Export format.

    Cheers,
    Bren

  6. Avatar

    In my opinion, this version has not changed much compared to version 22 and a series of bugs have been removed. I expected more from version 23.1.
    When the version is changed, significant changes must be made.

    • thatjeffsmith

      It’s bug fixes, an updated parser for 23c, and Graph SQL updates.

      What else would you like to see?

    • thatjeffsmith

      No, unless you mean SQL Developer Web, and then yeah, it’s been out for like 5 years now.

  7. Avatar
    Rene Jeruschkat Reply

    importing connections worked perfectly for me, what is a big issue for us is that connects in scripts no longer work

    select user,global_name from global_name;
    connect scott/[email protected]
    select user,global_name from global_name;

    -> first select works, second does not because connect actually disconnects
    > Connection created by CONNECT script command disconnected

    • thatjeffsmith

      I see what appears to be a regression here, so you’re not crazy. Let me confirm with R&D and get back to you.

      Thanks for the heads-up!

      Btw, these scripts should run just fine in SQLcl.

  8. Avatar

    Just unzipped and started up 23.1 on Windows 10 and chose toimport my 22.x settings etc. Lost all the folders that I’d organized my connections in.. Just a big list of connections now.

    • thatjeffsmith

      Can you reopen 22.x and see if they’re still there?

      My 22->23 upgrade maintained my folder organization for connections.

    • Avatar

      I was not – I’m at a different location using a different laptop.

      I performed the same upgrade on this laptop (from 22.2.0.173 build 173.2018 to 23.1.0.097 build 097.1607) this time I lost all my connections after clicking Yes (to import preferences).

      I did export all my connections prior to the upgrade and was able to import them after – everything looks good – including the folders.

  9. Avatar

    “VS Code … stuff” doesn’t have quite the same marketing punch (as a name) as Project Raptor did, but I can’t wait to get my hands on it nonetheless.

  10. Avatar
    John Thomas Reply

    Good to see this. We’ve needed those bugs fixed for a while.

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