Yesterday was an exciting day, we finally released our Oracle SQL Developer Extension for VS Code!

One of the first things you need to do to start using the extension is to create your first connection. And this immediately raises a very obvious questions.

Hey, I already defined these in SQL Developer, so…?

In an update coming soon, we’ll automatically import your existing connections from SQL Developer to the extension in VS Code, you won’t have to do anything. Believe me, I wanted this in v1, but I also wanted to ship this extension, and so we had to draw a line.

The good news is there’s a very easy workaround!

SQLcl makes this possible.

We’re going to use a ‘man in the middle,’ but in a good way! SQLcl and our Extension SHARE connections. That means, if you have a connection defined in SQLcl, it will appear in VS Code!

Of course Martin was already using the new connections feature in SQLcl!

What does this mean, or what does it look like?

These connections are defined once, and shared with our database tools offerings.

OK, so how do we get them into SQLcl?

Well, first you need to export them from SQL Developer (Classic).

I’m just going to export/import SOME of my connections.

I’m going to optionally include the passwords, protecting with yet another password, and then save to a file on my Desktop.

Grab what you want…

Now that we have the file, we can import them in SQLcl.

I’ve already shown how to do this in a post, here. But hey, let’s do it again.

Cool, I have more connections now to play with.

I should test one of those, right quick?

Insert Homer “Woohoo!”

Ok, now over to my VS Code instance with my SQL Developer Extension.

Just hit the “Refresh” button in your connections panel, and wait a second or 3…

There we go!

Awesome, my connections are there! They work, and if open the properties, I can see they are what they’re supposed to be.

A few notes on connections

They’re stored securely, using Wallets

On Windows, look here –

C:/users\yourUser\AppData\Roaming\DBTools\connections

On your Mac, they’ll be in your $HOME/.DBTools folder, so something like

/Users/thatjeffsmith/.DBTools/connections

I have lots of connections, where are the folders??

For organizing many, many connections, this is very handy! And we agree, it’ll be coming later this year.

Same on being able to differentiate connections, by something LIKE coloring them as we did in SQL Developer Classic. Stay tuned.

What about Proxy or LDAP connections, I don’t see that connection type?

We’ll have formal GUI support for those also later this year, although it’s possible to create those connections RIGHT NOW.

For PROXY connections, just use the [user] syntax like Moritz shows here –

And for LDAP (and most any other type of connections, you can use the JDBC Url connection type) as a workaround.

Be careful talking to me in public, I might quote you here.

You would use something like this, as shown in the docs

jdbc:oracle:thin:@ldap://oid:5000/mydb1,cn=OracleContext,dc=myco,dc=com

But Jeff, all of this is great, but I don’t have SQLcl!!!

Yes, yes you do, you do if you have either SQL Developer OR the VS Code Extension. We ship SQLcl in both of those!

You officially have ZERO reasons now for NOT taking advantage of the command line 🙂
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.

10 Comments

  1. Hi,
    I’m trying to import the file using SQLcl 24.2 on Windows 10, however I am unable to access the file. The weird thing is that it says that the file was not found, however if I do cd and Tab, I see the file in the current dir’s list:

    SQL> connmgr import -key mySecret ./conns.json
    Import file ./conns.json not found in current directory or SQLPATH.
    SQL> connmgr import -key mySecret conns.json
    Import file conns.json not found in current directory or SQLPATH.
    SQL> cd
    SQLDeveloperIcons.icns hs_err_pid42188.log sdcli-Darwin.conf sqldeveloper-Darwin.conf
    common.boot java11.conf sdcli.boot sqldeveloper-debug.conf
    conns.json jdk.conf sdcli.conf sqldeveloper-nondebug.conf
    history.log logging-debug.conf sdcli.exe sqldeveloper.boot
    hs_err_pid15396.log logging.conf sdcli64.exe sqldeveloper.conf
    hs_err_pid15704.log replay_pid15396.log splash.gif sqldeveloper.exe
    hs_err_pid16696.log replay_pid28008.log splash.png sqldeveloper64.exe
    hs_err_pid17888.log replay_pid3596.log sql sqldeveloper64W.exe
    hs_err_pid28008.log replay_pid4064.log sql.exe sqldeveloperW.exe
    hs_err_pid3596.log replay_pid42188.log sql.exe.bak version.properties
    hs_err_pid4064.log sdcli sqldeveloper

    Any idea how I can import the file?

    • just cd to the directory (using the cd command in sqlcl) and do the import with the file name, without the ./

    • I tried both versions (without and with “./”), as can be seen in my output above. Also I did the cd before, this is why cd and tab already shows the content of the directory. The file is there, but the command can’t find it.

      I suppose there is an incompatibility between the version used to create the file and the one I’m using to import it.
      The export was generated with the latest SQL Developer release 23.1.1 which comes with bundled SQLcl 23.1.

      I tried to replace the bundled version with 24.2 and to re-export, but unfortunately it would not show my connections anymore, so I reverted back to the original files.

      SQL> cd “C:\…\Documents\Programme\sqlcl\sqlcl\bin”
      SQL> connmgr import -key mySecret conns.json
      Import file conns.json not found in current directory or SQLPATH.
      SQL> cd
      conns.json dependencies.txt sql sql.exe version.txt

  2. Milan Šťáva Reply

    Hi,

    for all those who never used sqlcl before and can not get to its command line (macos, but it should not metter):

    [milan@PC1 milan % cd /Users/milan/sqlcl/bin/
    [milan@PC1 bin % ./sql /NOLOG

    SQLcl: Release 24.2 Production on Mon Sep 09 08:07:24 2024

    Copyright (c) 1982, 2024, Oracle. All rights reserved.

    [SQL>

  3. Conditioner Gordon Reply

    Hello Jeff,

    thank you for sharing the steps. Unfortunately there is no info about SSL encrypted connections. On my linux instance theese are no longer working as I suspect the trusted certificates can’t be found. The docs don’t seem to mention the proper way to add trusted certificates for TCPS connections. Could you please help to clear this up?

    Thank you!

    Gordon

  4. Hello Jeff.
    This saved me a lot of time, really really thank you!

    However, after installing the extension I couldn’t open SQLc from VSCode. Even trying to open it from the terminal list, it opened a powershell instead.
    It worked for me only after setting up manually 1 first working connection. Not a big deal, but if it’s not just me it could be added to the guide.

    Thanks again,
    Alessandro

  5. Mikael Fransson Reply

    /Users/thatjeffsmith/.DBTools/connections

    Should probably be

    /Users/thatjeffsmith/.dbtools/connections

    No .folder on my mac uses capitals.

    Feature request, add a delete function for the connmgr or put it in VS Code.

    Thanks
    Mikael

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