Quest offers new Toad tools for Oracle Java development, cloud DBs

Oracle application developers who use Quest Software’s Toad for Oracle will soon be able to work with Java inside their Eclipse IDE framework with a new tool that Quest announced on Monday.

Toad Extension for Eclipse, which is now being offered in a beta version, allows developers to perform essential development tasks in Eclipse, the most popular IDE framework for Java development. Daniel Norwood, senior product manager for Quest Software, said that the company developed this new tool, along with the recently launched Toad for Visual Studio, to provide more options for Toad customers who deal with both application and database development.

“As … Toad users are increasingly wearing multiple hats and writing code in .NET and Java as well as PL/SQL, we want to be there in those IDEs to help them with their database work,” Norwood said.

Users can currently perform tasks such as making connections to the database, browsing the database, working with database objects and using the full schema browser, he said. Other features -- such as a debugger and the ability to wrap SQL code for Java -- will be available by the time the tool is released as a freeware product later this year.

Another new Quest product currently offered in beta form is Toad for Cloud Databases. While users who have an Oracle database hosted in the cloud can perform many of their management tasks with Toad for Oracle, this new product is focused on NoSQL databases including Microsoft Azure Table services, Microsoft SQL Azure, Amazon SimpleDB, Apache HBase, Apache Cassandra and any ODBC-enabled relational databases. These databases are not generally accessible through the SQL language, but Toad for Cloud Databases changes that by allowing users to use the Toad interface to write SQL queries and browse the database like a relational system.

Norwood said that Quest wanted to provide options for its customers while they are in the process of experimenting with and learning about cloud computing.

“There are some companies which are heavily invested in these cloud databases, but for most of us, we’re on the bleeding edge,” he said.

Norwood also underscored the importance of the customer’s needs when developing future Toad products.

“Today we support Oracle on the Toad extension of Eclipse,” he said. “But our plans are to also support mySQL, and then, based on customer feedback, other databases.”