Oracle SQL Developer Reviews

The primary use case is developing and maintaining databases.

Maintaining databases is the most valuable feature in Oracle SQL Developer. It's also easy to use, fast, and intuitive.

I would like to see better tuning modules. It could also be more intuitive, easier to use, not so complicated finding the things you need to do, and support background processes better.

It's not so stable. Sometimes it crashes, and the connection to the databases is bad. 

The scalability is very good. It can scale out, up.

When selecting a vendor the most important criterion is that they are professional.

I rate this solution at six out of 10 because there are better tools that I am using. One of them is Toad, from Quest Software. Toad is more intuitive, easier to use, doing better work, and has more features.

I prefer Toad. But if it is a question of budget, it's better to use SQL Developer.

It's for monitoring the database and for PL/SQL Developer.

We can install it on each machine, every user can install it by himself. And we have a lot of support for the utility from Oracle, for free.

It's free and very user-friendly.

I would like to see it support NoSQL database.

Stability is very good.

Scalability is very good.

Technical support is helpful. We open an SR with Oracle and they answer us in the SR.

We used Toad. We move to this solution because it's free. Toad costs a lot of money.

The initial setup was straightforward.

Database querying, curating scripts, and database tuning.

We have a QA team and we don't want to buy a special product for them just to query the database, so we use Oracle SQL Developer.

It's free.

If they had something on the Web then you wouldn't need to install it, just query, like Enterprise Manager.

It's stable. It's a little bit slower because of Java, but it's stable.

It's scalable.

We used to use SQL *Plus, but we needed something with more of a GUI for users who are not technical users.

When selecting a vendor the most important criterion is the price.

Setup is very easy.

This was the only free solution we evaluated. And it belongs to Oracle so that was good for us.

Toad is much faster to use. It's not Java which takes a lot of time to query and create things. You just install it on Windows and it works perfectly. Much better than the Java.

Just try it. It's very easy.

We manage user databases and we see execution plans for performance. It's performing very well.

We can understand where everything is and we can we work with it very easily.

It's free, it's very easy to use, and has a nice GUI.

Although the GUI is nice, it could still use improvement, a better user interface.

It's a stable solution.

It's scalable. Everybody can install it on his or her machine.

Technical support is good.

It's easy to set up.

We use it daily to merge our databases. In my function, I use it as my client database.

I am also using a newer version. It is small client, which is new product. We use the GUI product daily. This is my daily tool for whatever I am doing. 

• It is very easy to use. 
• I have a lot of flexibility with it. 
• For DBA tasks, it is also very good.

It is easy to use. 

The newer version has a lot of new features. It generates output and scripts for your Ultrix. It can generate JSON, XML, etc. 

The competing products have more features. 

It is stable. There are no problems. It is a client.

It is just client. It does not really matter. It is scalable, especially the newer version is non-GUI version. You do not have to install it, just dump it on the OS, then use it.

There is no setup. It is just set it up and you connect the database.

It is basically free. 

Try this if you do not need a lot of storage, especially since it is free and if it is the newer version with no GUI version. Everybody should try it because you do not have to code things to create output from JSON or DDL. It allows you to get everything you want together: tables, indexes, etc.

We use it to support developers. Its main use is for developers to connect to a database.

The main benefit of SQL Developer is that it is free.

The possibility to connect.

There are many additional features I would like to see. The main one would be installation with an installer.

The stability depends on what version you're using. There are more successful versions and are less successful versions. For example, 17.3 is less successful. There were many bugs. Now, we are trying to pull all the developers to upgrade to 17.4.

No problem with scalability.

I used technical support twice. They were not supportive. I didn't get a solution. During the support session, we simply upgraded to the next version. The bug was then gone.

We didn't have a previous solution but, in parallel, we use Toad; its license is expensive.

The important criteria for me when selecting a vendor are good support and an affordable price.

I think a conventional installation, with an installer, would work better. Now, it is a zipped .exe.

Using this solution depends on budget and on the number of developers. The more developers you have, the less you will want SQL Developer.

One of the goals of the tool is to allow the user to complete tasks with the least number of steps. For example, to load an Excel spreadsheet into a table, you just have to complete a simple, four-step wizard and all the data will be in your table.

Another example is having quick access to queries you executed some time ago without having to manually save them. That way, you can still access an important or frequently used query that maybe you forgot to save.

Generating data files from queries with minimum setup is a time saver. You can preset the output format you want (CSV, insert, Excel, JSON to name a few), run your query and the file will be generated in that format.

• The tight integration with other Oracle products and database features/options. For example, you can open data models, and review AWR and ASH reports.
• The ability to reuse your own queries to create report definitions in different layouts and to render the output in HTML/PDF formats.
• Export table data and query results in at least 10 different output formats.
• The Cart to collect DDL/DML scripts for DB artifacts that need to be deployed together. Great when you want to execute a repeatable process in several schemas and/or databases.

I would like to see the Monitor Sessions functionality to provide access to SQL Monitor reports in the same format used by Oracle Enterprise Manager. That would help developers to see what their SQL statements are doing as they run.

The output (generated report) is the same. It's an HTML+ flash type of report that both products allow to save. The part that I like about Oracle Enterprise Manager is that once you get into a report, it keeps refreshing its execution statistics and performance metrics as the query progresses. SQL Developer only shows a snapshot of the execution statistics and performance metrics at the moment you request the report.

Both products have access to the same API to produce these reports so I thought it would be nice if SQL Developer could match OEM's default behavior.

I would like to see more functionality to assist in having database-enforced source control on objects and data.

I think the product is really stable and the Oracle Database Tools team is very responsive to any issues that could impact its usability.

Customer Service:

I think this is one of the brightest aspects of SQL Developer. The Product Manager and the main developers are very active in the OTN Forums, Stack Overflow, Social Media, etc. They’re always presenting at conferences, providing articles, blog posts and all kinds of insights on the best ways to use the product.

Technical Support:

Technical Support is also great because the SQL Developer team is available to the community, providing answers to questions and releasing bug fixes in a timely manner.

SQL Developer has reached a maturity level where it offers pretty much the same essential functionality (and much more) that you can find in other solutions, with the benefit of being free. Why not use it then?

Initial setup is as easy as download, unzip and start using it. I recommend using the version that includes its own Java Runtime Environment. Of course, this is from the perspective of a single user.

I did not evaluate other options.

Invest some time on standardizing the preferences/reports and centralize them so that all of your developers use exactly the same setup. For example, you could customize all the preferences that format your code in order to follow your company’s SQL and PL/SQL standards.

It's a free tool which allows you to see an Oracle Database structure and run queries against Oracle Databases.

• It's a free tool
• Ability to analyze performance, using Explain Plan statement
• Ability to export and import data without using any Oracle utilities

It would be nice to have the ability to access DBs than Oracle.

No stability issues.

No scalability issues.

Very good.

I have used tools such as Toad, PL/SQL Developer, SQL Navigator. I switched because this one is free.

Initial set-up was straightforward. Just download the solution from Oracle OTN and after that run the installer.

It’s a free tool.

Toad, SAP ADS, SQL Navigator.

It’s a great tool for accessing and exploring Oracle Databases.