A Piece of SQL Developer News: 1.5.5

We released SQL Developer 1.5.5 on OTN yesterday.

You may be wondering why we have had so many minor releases of SQL Developer. The main release with all the new functionality is SQL Developer 1.5 and we published a list of the new functionality that went into 1.5. Following a main release we've typically had a significant patch release, which in this case was 1.5.1. The next three releases were minor and while they have each had a number of additional bug fixes, each had a specific role.

1.5.3 - our first Japanese translation
1.5.4 - we added the rest of the languages we'll be supporting Japanese, Spanish, Italian, German, French, Brazilian Portuguese, Simplified Chinese and Korean
1.5.5 - this is the release that is scheduled for 11gR2 and is also on the media pack with the new Oracle SQL Developer Data Modeler.

...and each pulled in a few issues that had raised their heads on the forum, along with few others. Methinks it pays to be involved and active on the forum.

The Data Modeler is drawing lots of interest, which is great news. We've just published a Pricing FAQ on OTN as there has been some confusion on that.

Oracle SQL Developer Data Modeler is Production

Well,well, well... it's July and in the UK the temperatures have reached the 30's. This might be normal for many of you, but for us, the gardens, the houses and the dogs are not quite used to it. Now for those of you thinking that this has become a biannual weather blog, you might not be far off. Since the last was in January and it was talk of snow...

So the reason for the lack of "blogginess" is multi-fold, some is that I have been working on our new product in addition to SQL Developer and some that I am writing a SQL Developer book. So it's not so much lack of material as lack of hours to write some more...

Now I do have so much to share with you, that I'm really keen to break this silence and get more words to paper (screen). Also there are many lovely little features in SQL Developer 1.5.4 that I find many of you don't know about, when I show them at events, that I should be doing short features more often. Mind you here's a blog on REAL-TIME SQL Monitoring, a feature that I wanted to write about for ages and Doug Burns has done it instead. (Thanks Doug) I've also been sent a list of blog topic suggestions from an attendee at one of the recent events I attended, so there really is no excuse.

Now that new tool: Oracle SQL Data Modeler. It's production! We published all the related material yesterday and hopefully the news won't be overwhelmed by all the Oracle Fusion Middleware 11g annoucements happening this week. Still it's all good and all good news.

You can download it from the main OTN site, as it's a featured download there, or you can go to our Data Modeler homepage for links to the download and the FAQ and other supporting technical docs and examples. This page will be updated fairly regularly as we add more bits of collateral. Remember too to use the SQL Developer forum if you have questions, and when I return from my blogging holiday, I'll mix SQL Developer and Data Modeler news and details here.

Frost on the Ground and New Year Ahead

Happy New Year to you all! May 2009 be a great year. I know our newspapers are full of gloom, but I'm looking forward to the year and some of the promise it holds.

2008 was quite a year for us in the SQL Developer team. I took a month off in March to work with children in a Delhi slum and then hit the ground running on my return as we were working on bringing a new product on board and the challenges that brings. After that I was back on the road talking at as many conferences and events as we could fit in. I'm really lucky in that our development managers, Kris and Barry, will travel and talk at these events too and so I'm not so stretched and SQl Developer gets to more events. I'm hoping to get more folk involved from other teams this year and so we can settle down to working on ensuring the features you request are in the product.

Conferences I talked at in 2008 were RMOUG, in Denver, ODTUG, in New Orleans, OOW, in San Francisco, SOUG, in Glasgow, Scotland, SAOUG, in Pilanesberg, South Africa, SOUG, in Switzerland, Oracle Develop, in China, UKOUG, in Birmingham, England, DOAG, in Nuremberg, Germany. While the list seems long, it is missing a few obvious spots! South America, Australia, New Zealand, Canada and great chunks of Europe and Asia. Perhaps if you live in an area where there is a user group and you know a bit about SQL Developer, you should consider doing a presentation. You'd be amazed how much you learn and how little things you show folk can be really useful.

Of all the talks I do, the one on creating user defined extensions is the most fun. There are always folk in the audience who suddenly have an idea and want to go home a try them. I'm hoping to see some of those ideas come to the fore this year. Let's hear about them. I'd also love to see your laundry list of places you talked at and what you presented (On SQL Developer of course)

Of course I should mention that we started to talk about SQL Developer Data Modeling and by the end of 2008 had released our second early adopter. We've had over 10,000 downloads of the beta software, so we're really excited that there is an interest and that many of your are testing and sending us feedback. Thank you! If you haven't tried it yet, try now. (That link takes you to OTN with viewlets and white papers and the link to the download.)

SQL Developer in 2008
We had planned to go from SQL Developer 1.2.1 to SQL Developer 2.0, but then the list of user requests on the SQL Developer Exchange was so long, that we decided on an interim release and so SQL Developer 1.5 was born. As ever we followed with a patch release to fix a few issues and so 1.5.1 was the main release of the year. SQL Developer 1.5.2 does exist, it's the release that is part of JDeveloper 11g, which was production soon after Oracle Open World in September. The next release planned was to address our translations and so SQL Developer 1.5.3 was purely a translation drop, but we soon realized that not all the languages were quite accurate and as Japanese was the most requested translation release, we were able to release our Japanese build, SQL Developer 1.5.3. So although 2008 was the year of 1.5.x, we will be slipping another 1.5.x drop into the start of 2009 with the other translations in the build. This'll mean that SQL Developer supports 9 languages.

Mountains in the Snow...
I ended my year of travel in the mountains in Scotland. If you're going to walk on frozen ground, then I recommend you do that there! Actually I ended the year climbing up though a temperature inversion. Not a big deal if you're an 'plane or climbing in the Alps, but a feat in Scotland. What a day! We walked up through the mist and then the clouds onto the top of the mountain and bright skies. The white on the rock is feathery ice, not snow.

SQL Developer Events in 2009
It's probably not going to be the "year of the conferences", but there are a few to add to your diaries now:
Oracle Develop: Moscow (4-5 Feb)
Oracle Develop: Prague (10 - 11 Feb)
RMOUG: Denver (10 - 12 Feb)
Collaborate: Orlando (3-7 May)
ODTUG: Monterey (22-25 June)
OOW is in October this year in San Francisco.
That should keep us going for a while.

With the exception of Collaborate, we'll have hands on sessions at all the events. For the above events, the speakers will be Barry, Kris and I. We'll also have a few Oracle Developer Days, which provide hands on sessions and will be run by local staff. Details for those will be on OTN.

SQL Developer in 2009
So the piece you're probably most interested in - what's up for 2009?

Well, our first release will be soon and that's the 1.5.4 release I mentioned above. We're dependent on getting all the translated files back, and then we can go, but it shouldn't be too many months.
Then we head for SQL Developer 2.0. This is our "modeling" release. I use the quotes, because we'll be releasing SQL Developer Data Modeling as a stand alone release - a purely data modeling product, so that those of you who don't want to do any SQL or PL/SQL coding can just model. (and those of you who don't want to model, will not have that included in SQL Developer.) So the plan is to release 2 products, SQL Developer 2.0 and SQL Developer Data Modeling, at the same time, later this year.
If you're not a Data Modeler, don't despair, SQL Developer 2.0 will be including a number of smaller requested features and many updates to the features that are already there.

Requesting New Features
Before I close, if you're still there, I'm seeing a number of features requested that are already in the product. This means that you're not finding the nuggets of wealth ;-) in the product. If you have features you love to use or find a few things that you struggled with and then solved, why not write it up? We have a blog we'd love you all to participate in: http://sqldevelopersig.blogspot.com/ It only has my first entry in it, and I'd love you all to add a piece. You just need to let me know and we can give you access.

Otherwise, I'm hoping, but not committing to, writing a few more little entries here, so that you can enjoy the benefits of the features the developers have added. (According to my decline in blog entries over the last few years, I only need to do 4 this year!)

Have a good one.
Sue

First Early Adopter: Oracle SQL Developer Data Modeling.

I've just put this announcement onto OTN:

The SQL Developer team is pleased to announce their first Early Adopter release of Oracle SQL Developer Data Modeling.

• Review the main data modeling page, with links to initial documentation and supporting collateral.
• Access the Early Adopter Download. This download link walks you through a brief one-time survey, before you can download the product. For future early adopter releases, you will not be required to repeat the survey.
• Provide feedback to the the team through the Feedback application, where you can add all your comments and log issues.
• Read the supporting Release Notes.

The Oracle SQL Developer SIG kicks off at Oracle OpenWorld

I have entered the first post on http://sqldevelopersig.blogspot.com/ "What? Another Blog and you don't update this one regularly!" I hear you say. Yes, you may be right, but the new blog is a shared community blog. Well that's the plan, and it was suggested at the first SIG meeting at the Unconference at OpenWorld in San Francisco. When many of the delegates were turning to airports or having a last day lie-in, a small group of enthusiast joined a few team members to discuss the possibility of have a SQL Developer SIG. All ideas raised were discussed and noted and you'll find those ideas, and some initial feedback on http://sqldevelopersig.blogspot.com

Take a look, we'd love you to get involved. The great thing about a community blog is that you can write up an idea when you want and do not need to feel committed to be a regular contributor. You can, of course add comments at any stage.

Aah, and the team members will continue to update their own blogs in much the same way as we have to date. When we get the time and have something we really want to tell you. Entries are mostly driven by the former, not the latter.

SQL Developer Visits Oracle OpenWorld

Last week the SQL Developer team met in San Francisco for Oracle OpenWorld. We love it as it's a great opportunity to talk to customers and hear what they really like and don't like and to listen to ideas. It's also a great opportunity for the team to get together and catch up as we're scattered across a few countries!

OpenWorld is a huge undertaking for Oracle and many staff are involved on some level or other, whether at the event or behind the scenes before the show. There is a secondary developer focused event that runs simultaneously, this year starting on Sunday, called Oracle Develop. It's a smaller event, a conference-within-a-conference, and is focused on technical talks and hands-on sessions. We had a few talks and a variety of hands-on sessions at Oracle Develop and a few talks and demo pods at OpenWorld. Our talks and hands on sessions were mostly well attended, but it was the news of the new Data Modeling support that stole the show. Everyone was really interested in what the product will offer and of course when it will be available. As ever we can't provide exact release dates, but we're looking at 2009 for production. We're currently running internal preview releases and will move to external preview or early adopter releases within the next month or so. There are a few final things that need to be sorted before we do that. Watch the OTN Forum for an update on that.

SQL Developer SIG
We launched our SQL Developer SIG at OOW. One of the concerns we have is that writing XML extensions is easy and yet we don't hear of many folk doing that. Maybe you all are, but don't share your experiences! We also have a growing set of developers building more complex extensions, mostly java, who are looking for advice and pointers. We have now setup an area on http://wiki.oracle.com for the SQL Developer SDK and will continue to add detail and examples to this.
So the idea was that if we set up a SIG then we'd have a vehicle to talk to those developers regularly. But a SIG is also much more and so we held the initial, kick-off of the SQL Developer SIG the Unconference (at OOW) on Thursday morning early and we discussed options and plans. The SIG is for everyone using SQL Developer, not just those wanting to build extensions. There is so much to discuss and share and as ever it's good to get opinions and input from the community. One of the plans is to have a communal SQL Developer blog. More on that later.

More Conferences
There are still more conferences around, Oracle Develop is on the road and along with other events, SQL Developer is visiting Scotland, South Africa, Switzerland, Germany, UK, China, and India and that's this year!

We're starting to plan our events for next year, if there is a conference near you or a subject area you think we should look into, let me know.

Conference Season

I think the whole of 2008 is conference season! It's starting to feel like it. I think I don't travel much, certainly I know that Oracle Sales Consultants seems to be on the road permanently and I know some of the Oracle Server Tech PMs are really busy on the road. I tend to be desk based, well, that's how I see myself. So here's how a desk-based PM spends her time.

I'm at HQ this week - nice spot - lovely weather, although deceptively cold. I say that because the sky is the same colour as it was last week and the hotel room temperature is the same as last week, but it all changes when I step outside. Where I was last week might explain why I feel that. Last week was ODTUG in New Orleans!

Great event. Lots of very enthusiastic and experienced developers. Most willing to learn new technologies and excited and positive about the future.
As ever the conference supported 50% new attendees. Each year it does (as so most conferences) and each year we are surprised. "[shocked and amazed] You mean half of these folk have never been before? Where are the oldies?" Anyway, there were enough of "the oldies" about and that's great. Although sometimes I wonder what it feels like for the new folk, as there is something of a family feel about the place as folk catch up on news since last everyone met and lots of name dropping in the various talks as if everyone knows everyone else. I guess most do.

I did 2 talks. One I call my "drill down" talk, where I assume you use the tool or a similar one, and show some of the more in depth things you can do. Typically, I pick 4 features and spend about 15 mins on each topic. My personal favorite is the XML extensibility, which we can all do. No need for Java skills to extend some aspects of SQL Developer and certainly a nifty aspect to the tool. (Most DBAs I know have a collection of utilities or tasks they regularly perform). If you have no idea what I am talking about, search this blog or the OTN pages, there is a tutorial on the SQL Developer pages on just that feature.

My other talk is the SQL Developer overview and as someone pointed out, now requires more than an hour. Next time I'll skip the intro completely. I did a few positioning slides and then dived into a 50 minute demo. By all accounts - well received.

That an hour is a little short is easily illustrated - I was in Denmark a few weeks back, where I spent the day with a group of DBAs and developers, each armed with their laptops, and together we walked our way through SQL Developer, from the APEX support to the Migration, through XML extensions and reporting. It was a great day.

News
We were excited to bring some news of the next release of SQL Developer to ODTUG. You might have seen this in the "twittersphere", on other blogs, or have stumbled across our latest Statement of Direction. The plan is to incorporate data modeling in SQL Developer. This is a much requested feature in a tool already being used by many database developers and architects. We'll publish an FAQ on OTN in due course to address queries about this.

More Conferences
As I submitted abstracts to events and then registered for these events, I've meant to let you know of their existence, but did not get to it. So ODTUG is over for 2008, but I'll remind you now that it'll be there next year and that they'll probably be asking for abstracts in November-ish, so diarise that!

There are quite a few events that you have not missed yet, like Oracle OpenWorld coming up in September. Details of talks are already available and what's great is that the "Develop" part of the event is at the Marriott, so not blocks away from the main event. Easy access between talks and hands on sessions. SQL Developer has 4 different hands on sessions, and 4 different talks, not to mention the demopods, where you can meet the developers and ask questions.

I've submitted abstracts to DOAG (in Germany), Israel, UKOUG (Birmingham) and Scotland (Glasgow) and will be submitting to the New York user group. So if you missed the chance to hear more about SQL Developer, there should be something near you. You'll note there is nothing in APAC and regrettably I can't get to AUSOUG.

Let me know if there is a conference near you. I can add that kind of news to the SQL Developer Exchange News page and keep everyone up-to-date.