3 reasons to upgrade your Toad® database development solution

Your current Toad® for Oracle database development solution has some fantastic features, and it is doing its job well. With that in mind, it may seem like there is no reason to upgrade to the latest version of Toad. If it’s not broken, don’t fix it, right? Well, not necessarily.

Toad database development products are robust, dependable, and feature-rich, but if you haven’t upgraded in a while, you are missing out on Toad’s latest features designed to refocus your teams on more strategic initiatives, improve performance, and move your business forward in today’s data-driven economy.

Here are three smart reasons to upgrade your Toad database development solution today.

1. Reduce risk with frequent software patching

Technology evolves at a rapid pace, and hackers and malicious actors take full advantage of this. Protecting your organization from security vulnerabilities is a 24/7/365 job, and many enterprises have trouble keeping up with patches and upgrades.

Missed patches are one of the top ways hackers get in. Upgrade to the newest version of Toad to access improved security features that help maintain compliance standards by preventing breaches that can lead to data loss.

2. Increase business productivity more than ever with the newest release 

Today’s fast-paced business environment demands high productivity and reduced business costs. As a current user, you already know that Toad for Oracle is a productivity tool at heart, offering several features that streamline business processes.

The versatility of Toad for Oracle means it is being used in a variety of roles. That’s why we provide an easily customizable user interface to meet different needs. Items can be quickly removed from, moved within, or added to the standard toolbar and menu to suit your individual style and maximize productivity.

Toad’s automation capabilities simplify tedious and complicated tasks, freeing up the team to work on higher-value projects. A few of the tasks you can automate with Toad include:

• Executing one or more SQL statements
• Reviewing code using Code Analysis
• Saving the results of queries or contents of tables to Excel
• Importing data from a file to the database
• Comparing and synching databases and schema-level objects
• Performing database health checks
• Generating various reports
• Integrating email and FTP delivery of results and reports
• Generating DDL scripts for a single object or an entire schema
• Unit testing

Development teams that fail to address code performance issues early on face potentially serious and expensive problems in production. Improving application performance is another area where the latest version of Toad excels.

Some of the key features driving Toad’s high-performance assurances include automated performance testing to help ensure production scalability with automated workload replay testing, database performance diagnostics that quickly pinpoint and resolve database performance inefficiencies, PL/SQL code profiling that lets you easily determine why your code is executing slowly by visually exposing performance bottlenecks, and database health and security checks that assess database health by validating performance, configuration, and security vulnerabilities.

New features in Toad, such as the multi-schema compare and data import, can help you compare and synchronize multiple schemas and data across your databases. These tools speed up the database migration process to minimize or eliminate the need for scheduled downtime.

You can read about many of the newest features in this blog article, 13 new features in Toad® for Oracle 13.2. With the latest edition of Toad for Oracle, released last fall, you can take advantage of unit testing and sensitive data protection.

Toad for Oracle 13.2 adds unit testing built on utPLSQL, a GUI front-end for the open source unit testing suite, utPLSQL. This feature lets you create and run unit tests, and review test results in an easy-to-read interface.

With Toad for Oracle’s enhanced Sensitive Data Protection feature, you can define default audit, encryption, and redaction policy options, and customize user-defined severity categories to individual sensitive data rules. Users are then able to apply these policies on multiple columns at the same time rather than applying them individually.

Other key enhancements available in Toad for Oracle 2019 include:

Code Quality & Analysis

• Perform automatic unit test and code reviews in the Editor
• Incorporate unit tests and code reviews as part of Continuous Integration (e.g., Jenkins, Bamboo) in conjunction with DevOps Toolkit

SQL Optimization

• Validate SQL and PL/SQL performance
• Optimize indexes based on database workload
• Predict performance issues before they happen
• Auto-tune inefficient SL and PL/SQL

Change Management

• See historical and future predictions of space usage
• Assess the impact of planned database changes
• Determine the likely scalability of PL/SQL code and SQL in production

Compare & Sync

• Compare and synchronize data, objects, schemas, and database configurations
• Create snapshots representing point-in-time schema state

Automation

• Ensure consistent results and minimize risks
• Automate processes and tasks for time savings
• Document procedures and processes

3. Unparalleled support to optimize Toad in your environment

Excellent customer support is more than just providing technical answers. We want you to have an unprecedented user experience, so we provide a comprehensive support portal and access to knowledge base resources so you can resolve issues quickly and independently.

At any point during code creation or change, a Toad developer can receive feedback from a product expert. In addition, developers have access to Code Analysis, Toad’s PL/SQL, and SQL advisor. Code Analysis will analyze the code, indicate coding violations, and offer recommendations on not only how to correct the issues but also how to optimize the code for better readability and maintainability.

With a current license, Quest provides all product users with access to a resource library including free training, evaluation guides, and a functional matrix to help you understand how to get the most out of your Toad for Oracle database development solution.

For the full Toad experience, Toad World lets you connect with other Toad users. If you’ve got questions, Toad World Forums is your place to find answers and discuss Toad products with other users and experts. To learn more about Toad’s human-centered design process, sign up to participate in research studies, and get early looks at products in progress, visit Toad World Design Labs.

Data drives today’s world economy, so if you aren’t optimizing your databases, you will be left behind. Toad for Oracle database development solution provides robust productivity, automation, and security features with unrivaled support and resources to keep you ahead of the pack.