Reviews
Review: TOAD for SQL Server
- By Mike Gunderloy
- April 5, 2004
TOAD for SQL Server 1.0
free
Quest Software
www.toadsoft.com
TOAD has been a popular Oracle development tool for years. Now owned by
Quest, TOAD continues to have its own independent Web site, and is
expanding its product line. One of the latest things they've done is
release a free version of this tool for Microsoft SQL Server users. As a
first approximation, you can think of it as a combination of Enterprise
Manager and Query Analyzer, with a user interface designed to be as
similar to the original TOAD as possible. As such, it will probably
appeal most to users migrating from the Oracle version, but it also
offers convenience for SQL Server DBAs in general.
The TOAD user interface provides a MDI window that can host multiple
DataBrowser and SQL Editor windows. The DataBrowser provides a tabbed
interface for picking object types (tables, views, and so on). When you
pick a type, there's a list of objects, together with toolbar buttons
for common operations such as truncating tables, exporting data, adding
constraints, and so on. These buttons open dialog boxes, so you can
perform most DBA operations without needing to know anyd etails of the
SQL involved.
When you doublt-click an item, its details are displayed in another
tabbed interface to the right of the DataBrowser. The tabs put all sorts
of information only a click away. For a table, for instance, you can see
columns, indexes, constraints, triggers, data, grants, dependencies, and
script information, just by selecting the appropriate tab. This is much
simpler than performing multiple navigation operations in SQL Server
Enterprise Manager to get the same information, even if you can
remember where it's all located.
The SQL Editor is pretty similar to Query Analyzer. Enter SQL, select a
database, run it, see the results. I was surprised to discover that I
couldn't drag things from the DataBrowser to the SQL Editor, but if you
just want to type and run stuff it works fine.
Overall, TOAD seems a fairly convenient way to perform SQL Server DBA
tasks. It's nice to have everything in one tool instead of two, and
though the tabs and buttons can be a bit overwhelming at first, they put
a lot of information right there for you. Certainly the price is right
as well.
About the Author
Mike Gunderloy has been developing software for a quarter-century now, and writing about it for nearly as long. He walked away from a .NET development career in 2006 and has been a happy Rails user ever since. Mike blogs at A Fresh Cup.