Production release of ODT now available

Question

I'm happy to announce that the production release of ODT is now available for download here:
http://www.oracle.com/technology/tech/dotnet/tools/index.html
There have been alot of enhancements over the beta. A few of the more interesting ones include:
* support for generating typed datasets
* ad hoc SQL Query Window with script support
* enhanced PL/SQL editing
* integrated error manual
Keep the feedback coming!
Christian Shay
Oracle

Answer 1

Here are some first impressions of the "Query window". This is just a list of the problems, so it seems quite negative. Some of the problems are small and some are larger. The thing that I think will annoy me most from day-to-day is the lack of a hotkey for execute and that bind-variables are not supported (but we all have our pet-bugs/problems):
- In the context menu for the connection move the "Query Window" up under open (I quite sure the query window is more used than both "Delete" and "Close").
- You shouldn't call the feature "Query Window" in the context menu and "Query Editor" in the title of the window. Be consistent.
- You might want to rename the "Query Window" to "Query Analyser" (for compatibility with sql server)
- A explain window (or rather a explain tab) should be added (like every other query tool).
- Sql-statements should be timed, the time should be shown in milisecounds(!) and rounded/truncated (it might not be that percise but it invaluble as a quick guage when rewriting a sql to see if you a going in the right direction). For extra points show any "long ops" messages/status at regular intervals. Maybe it would be very interesting (powerfull) to see "buffer gets" next to the elapsed time.
- "Execute" really need a hotkey. I would suggest either "Ctrl+Enter" (for compatibility with Toad), "Ctrl+E (for compatibility with Sql Server) or F5 (for compatibility with Sql Server and Visual Studio). The hot key sould be shown in a tooltip when hovering the execute button.
- I overlooked the execute button at first. Move it to a toolbar and make it a green "Play"-button (for compatibility with Toad, Tora and Sql Server).
- When having 2 sql-statements in a query window you seem to execute the last one. Please execute the one under the cursor. Sql statements should be seperated by empty lines (ie. containing only white space) or a semicolon.
- The "Toggle Query Output" is non-descriptive. Change it to "Hide Query Output" (and "Show Query Output" respectively) and add the little black cross that e.g. the "Task List" have.
- When having e.g. "select * from dual;" the Query Window and going to the line before that statement and typing "/*test" the whole window turns green (so far, so good), but when adding the closing "*/" after "test" the select-statement stays green.
- Line and collumn-numbers in the error messages would be really usefull.
- It seems that you don't provide help to the keywords? it thought that was one of the "selling points"?
- Intellisense would be nice (but maybe mostly a "cool"/"demoware" feature). But maybe a hotkey for opening the "Oracle Explorer" with the active (eg. where the cursor is on or a the right of) table/view/function/package/... expaned would be more usefull. If the cursor is at the right of the keyword "FROM" a list of tables should be shown but if it is on "FROM" the help with the syntax should be shown. Escape should return focus to the query.
- Ctrl+L should make the selection lowercase and Ctrl+U make it uppercase (or Ctrl+U and Ctrl+Shift+U for compatibility with the rest of VS.NET). I find that the code, I use the editors "change case"-feature most on is sql sinse I really like sql keywords upper case and identifiers lower case (and oracle ofthe make everything uppercase).
- Now I see that there is a execute button on the toolbar, but (a) you have made it a strange brownish green (please make it greener) (b) you have placed it in the far left (or that is where it showed for me) in the top toolbar, where I had expected it to the left of the text "Query Editor" (inside the "ORACLE://<shema>.<datasource>/Query" pane).
- Move the title "Query Editor" to the Tab (that says "ORACLE://<shema>.<datasource>/Query"). This will save some vertical space and make space for the toolbar. The title "Query Output" might be remove altogether.
- Bind variables doesn't seem to be supported. I think that this is really a problem since *you should make it easy for developers to do the right think* and bind variables certainly is the right thing. You should bring up a window with the binds that are used in the query and enable me to set their type (if you can't figure it out from context (eg. emp.id=:emp_id would probably mean that :emp_id is a number) and their value. Also please persist the type/value for each variable name so I don't need to figure out the id of that employee I usally test with.
A few non-query window notes:
- In the spirit of "make it easy to do the right thing", what would be the easy way to call (and get intellisense on) a package function in a the cs-file?
- In the context menu for a procedure "Run" should be "Run..." sinse it just brings up a window. And you probably want to "Delete" at the bottom (above the line).
- In the context menu for a view "Retrive Data..." should be "Retrive Data" sinse it doesn't bring up a dialog. I accidentally selected it for a rather large/slow view and really wanted a "Stop" button (thanks for the option to stop after 30 seconds). I think you shouldn't retrive more than, say, 50 rows without the user explicitly saying so (and never blob/long raw columns or more than eg. 100 chars from a clob/long column).
- The default action when dobbelt clicking a table shouldn't be "Retrive Data..."(!), it should be "Design...".
- Choosing "Generate Create Script..." (which might just be called "Generate Script") on a produce, funciton or package, should bring up a preview window with a save-button.
- When opening a function in the "Oracle Explorer", setting the cursor on eg. the keyword FUNCTION and hitting F1, the help index opens searching for "Oracle.ODT.SQL.CREATE FUNCTION", but there is (of cause?) no such topic. If I select the any part of the text in the help index search box and hit delete, I am asked "Oracle Explorer, Are you sure that you want to permanently delete '<shema>.<datasource>.<function name>' from the database ?" which is definetly not was I want to do!
With regards to the rest of the add-in, what is was really hoping for was Visual Source Safe integration and easy procedure calling, but that doesn't seem to be implemented. But then I don't know what the problem statement for this add-in was.