Category: PL/SQL Developer

I’ve been taking a look at the public beta of the next version of PL/SQL Developer. I’m currently using the 8.0 release, choosing not to upgrade to 9.0 when it was released last year. One of the new features Allround Automations added in 9.0 was the ability for one instance of the application to open sessions to multiple databases. I considered this a pretty risky enhancement.

However, in the upcoming 10.0 release, this multi-session feature seems to be refined and more solid. One nice enhancement is the ability to assign a window background color to specific connections.

Here, I am connecting to the QA, UAT, and PROD environments:

Now there is much less chance of accidently running a data update on the wrong DB! This feature would have been quite useful in 8.0 and earlier, frankly. It’s nice to have an obvious reminder of which environment you’re looking at.

Have you ever experienced a moment when you find that an application you’ve used for years has a feature that, if only you’d known about it, would have saved you time over and over again? It’s a mixed feeling… one one hand, it’s “Yay, this software is awesome!” and the other it’s “Doh! I’m an idiot!”.

Well, PL/SQL Developer just handed me another of those moments.

In the result grid of the SQL Query window, you can resize any row by grabbing the separator line in the margin and pulling down. I think I knew that… but what didn’t realize is that any column with a long string will then wrap into the extra space, like this:

I think that is pretty cool. And it’s been in the product since at least version 8 (which is what I’ve used for the last few years).