Toad is a set of database administration, development and performance optimization tools for major databases like Oracle, DB2, SQL Server, or MySQL. Quest Software has created a Visual Studio Extension for Toad for Oracle in order to benefit from VS features like code refactoring, version tracking, collaboration, unit testing or life cycle management.
Developers can use Toad to build, test and debug PL/SQL packages, procedures, triggers and functions. It can also be used to create tables, views, users, constraints and indexes:
- Create, browse, or alter objects (tables, views, indexes, etc.) including Oracle8 TYPE objects
- Graphically build, execute, and tune queries
- Edit and Debug PL/SQL and profile "stored procedures" including functions, packages, and triggers
- Search for objects
- Find and fix database problems with constraints, triggers, extents, indexes, and grants Toad utilizes direct Oracle OCI calls for full access to the Oracle API.
The Toad for Oracle Extension for Visual Studio 2010 provides integration between the two taking advantage of VS features like: offline database design, development and change management, integration within the application life cycle.
After importing an Oracle DB schema, the developer can work on it tracking changes with TFS, can refactor the code applying the change to an offline version of the schema, can compare and merge schemas, and can communicate with other team members. The developer can also generate data for unit test and can schedule the changes to be integrated into the nightly builds.
The Toad Extension does semantical and syntactical validation of the database related code. Versioning helps comparing different versions of the schema and the developer can roll back and forth the changes performed.
To create the Extension, Quest made use of VS Extension points, specifically extending the Database Schema Provider, a base class offering support for a number of database services like: parsing a script into its model, interpreting the script model into a schema model, or going the other way around from a schema model to a script file.
The Toad Extension for VS 2010 is currently in beta.