SQL Developer 3.0 Does Schema Browsing

I hope you take an opportunity of popping over to Kris's blog - he's just done a piece on the new pdf support in SQL Developer 3.0 The pdf support is great when you export your data you can export it to PDF. But not just that - there are loads of settings to control and format the file. Take a look at his encrypted pdf blog for a taster.

Schema Browsing
I want to tell you about the Schema Browser. This is a great feature for those of you who work with objects you don't own. So for example, if you have access to run queries or update tables that have been created by another schema, in all releases, including SQL Developer 3.0, the way to review these tables is either through the Other Users node or by creating synonyms for the tables and then having the tables displayed via the synonyms in your own connection. So it's a little fiddly. In SQL Developer 3.0, we have added in a new schema browser. To find it, select a connections, right-click to invoke the context menu and select Schema Browser. This opens a new navigator for that schema. Now you can do a number of things.

Firstly, select the schema you want to work with. This is equivalent to finding the user in the Other Users node. Then you can select the object-type you want to work with. Let's say, for arguments sake, that you select tables - You can filter the tables listed. The filter option is the same filter dialog you can use to filter any of the nodes in the Connections navigator.

In the image, I have circled the first two options. The filtering criteria can be set by using the additional drop lists.
There is another filter - it's a client-side filter - and this allows you to quickly filter objects in the already filtered list. In my example, I have a number of tables in the filtered list, and then I have reduced the list further by using the extra client-side filtering.

Try it out.

SQL Developer 3.0 Does Table API

Well, I couldn't wait a day to do another post. Here is a feature you would not have seen at OpenWorld. SQL Developer 3.0 generates a Table API. Now those of you who go far back enough will know other tools that did this and we have had a number of feature requests to add in a table API generator, so here we go, a TAPI!

Why a Table API? Well, some teams would never dream of letting developers insert, update , delete or generally work directly with tables. Many teams want to track who, what, when, where events and having a Table API (I call them "table wrappers") is a start point to add in that kind of code. Here's how you'll find it:

SQL Developer 3.0 Early Adopter is Available

Same week, new post, different product, new early adopter release. It's busy bees in the development teams as everyone works to settle the releases. You may have heard that we demonstrated SQL Developer 3.0 at Open World in September, and many of you felt the release had to be imminent. Well it was, but we did want to add in a few updates following OpenWorld. So now you have a second product on an early adopter release cycle. There are a few demos on OTN and we get more out to in the next few weeks. Watch Kris's blog and mine in the next month or so and we'll also be bringing you new feature news. In the meantime - download the software. Please provide all feedback on the SQL Developer forum (not here) where the developers will be camping out and helping you out.

SQL Developer Data Modeler 3.0 - Early Adopter Release

The news just keeps getting better. At Oracle OpenWorld, we announced that the Data Modeler is now a free product. This was very exciting for us and for the many customers who came to talk to us at the show. I'm really pleased as there is no excuse for not modeling your database, or at the very least to connect to a data dictionary and see how your tables are all connected - visually!

The news that the product is free means more than that to us, it now means that we can run a public early adopter program and so you can go, today, and download SQL Developer Data Modeler 3.0 Early Adopter 1. All the features that you used in SQL Developer 2.0 are still there, in addition there are a few new features that I think you'll like. The best bet is to go to the Data Modeler home page and take a look at the online demonstrations available. The first three walk through the new functionality in the product. They're about 12 - 15 mins each and I show the new features and explain as much as I can it he given time. The last two are short viewlets on two aspects of the current functionality. Of course if you know nothing of the product, then just look at the brief online Data Modeler 2.0 demonstration. This is for the current production release, but it'll get you started and the flow of work is the same.