Release Notes

Toad^® for Oracle 2024 R2

Release Notes

Revised 10/15/2024

About Toad for Oracle

Toad for Oracle provides an intuitive and efficient way for database professionals of all skill and experience levels to perform their jobs with an overall improvement in workflow effectiveness and productivity. With Toad for Oracle you can:

• Understand your database environment through visual representations
• Meet deadlines easily through automation and smooth workflows
• Perform essential development and administration tasks from a single tool
• Deploy high-quality applications that meet user requirements; perform predictably and reliably in production
• Validate database code to ensure the best-possible performance and adherence to best-practice standards
• Manage and share projects, templates, scripts, and more with ease

The Toad for Oracle solutions are built for you, by you. Nearly two decades of development and feedback from various communities like Toad World have made it the most powerful and functional tool available. With an installed-base of over two million, Toad for Oracle continues to be the "de facto" standard tool for database development and administration.

Toad for Oracle resources

Toad World is a unique and valuable resource available to all Toad users. Toad World provides forums, blogs, videos, product information, Beta releases (when available), and Trial downloads for Toad products. Visit Toad World at: https://www.toadworld.com.

Two of the most-often used features of Toad World are the Forums and the Idea Pond.

• On the Idea Pond page, you can submit your ideas to improve Toad and vote for or comment on other ideas. The Toad team takes your suggestions seriously, and you may even hear back from one of our developers on the topic. We encourage all Toad users—from new to experienced—to let us know how we can improve Toad.
• On the Forum page, you can ask a question or start a discussion and view all other forums within the Toad community.

The Toad World blog pages feature a broad range of information, including topics of interest to our industry, as well as instructions from team members on how to use the latest Toad features.

The Toad for Oracle web-based training is a perfect accompaniment to your product license. This free training walks you through major product features and explains how to perform frequent tasks. You’ll also see how to utilize time-saving automation functionality. You’ll receive a certificate of completion for each course once you pass the accompanying test.

About this release

Toad for Oracle2024 R2 is a minor release, with enhanced features and functionality.

Toad for Oracle 2024 R2 includes component and requirement upgrades. These upgrades address security vulnerabilities previously identified in the third party component.

About Toad^® for Oracle^®Editions

Each Toad for Oracle Edition is packaged with additional Quest products to expand your experience.

Toad for Oracle Subscription

Toad for Oracle is now available with subscription licensing. The benefits of subscription include:

• All of the great, award-winning Toad features you have grown to love
• Access to our world-class support team, Knowledge Base, how-to videos and more
• Quest Auto Update keeping you on the latest version
• Online License Management making it easy to assign licenses to individuals, keep track of individual usage, manage organizations, and reassign unused or under-used licenses as needed to ensure license compliance
• Automatic Renewal ensuring that Toad for Oracle Subscription will be continuously available to users
• Invitations to training events like our Ask Toad and Toad Training Tuesdays series

The following products may be part of your Toad for Oracle Subscription Edition:

• Toad for Oracle
• Benchmark Factory for Databases
• Code Tester for Oracle
• Spotlight on Oracle
• SQL Optimizer for Oracle
• erwin Data Modeler Lite for Oracle
• Toad Data Modeler

Note: All Subscription Editions are available in an 'AI Enabled' version, which includes everything in the standard edition plus the AIExplain feature to assist with code comprehension. Read more about AIExplain at Toad World.

The following Toad for Oracle Subscription Editions are available:

Note: Spotlight on Oracle® includes Spotlight on Unix/Linux, Spotlight on Windows, and Spotlight on Oracle® Data Guard.

Toad for Oracle non-Subscription

Toad for Oracle non-Subscription uses offline term and perpetual licensing. This is Toad for Oracle's legacy licensing model.

The following products may be part of your Toad for Oracle non-Subscription Edition:

• Toad for Oracle
• Benchmark Factory for Databases
• Code Tester for Oracle
• Spotlight on Oracle
• SQL Optimizer for Oracle
• erwin Data Modeler Lite for Oracle
• Toad Data Modeler

The following Toad for Oracle non-Subscription Editions are available:

Note: The DB Admin Module can be added to any Toad Edition. Spotlight on Oracle® includes Spotlight on Unix/Linux, Spotlight on Windows, and Spotlight on Oracle® Data Guard.

Toad for Oracle on Mac

Toad for Oracle is now available for Mac using a new license specific for macOS. Click here to download the free trial.

It includes the great, award-winning Toad features you have grown to love with a few limitations:

• There is no installer so setting Toad to be read-only or disable internet access using command-line arguments during installation is not possible
• Scheduling tasks and Utilities | Task Scheduler are unavailable
• Auto Update is unavailable in the Subscription version
• The edition includes Toad for Oracle; additional Quest products are not included
• Team Coding does not support VCS integration
• Excel Instance and Microsoft Access formats for Export/Import features are unsupported
• Only executables bundled with Toad may be launched (e.g. Toad Script Runner); other external applications and Utilities | External Tools are unsupported
• Font choosers may appear to duplicate fonts due to truncation; Courier New, Courier New Baltic, and Courier New Greek, for example, may all show as Courier New
• Only clientless connections are supported
  • Direct connect works as usual
  • TNS and LDAP connections work as usual provided the network configuration files (e.g. tnsnames.ora, ldap.ora, and sqlnet.ora) are found on disk in either of these folders:
    • $TNS_ADMIN
    • $ORACLE_HOME/network/admin
  • If TNS_ADMIN and ORACLE_HOME are not defined environment variables you may place the network configuration files in a special folder created by Toad upon first launch for this purpose; only one of these folders will exist depending on your version of Toad:
    • ~/Library/Application Support/Toad for Oracle/TnsAdmin
    • ~/Library/Application Support/Toad for Oracle Subscription/TnsAdmin

The following Toad for Oracle on Mac Editions are available:

Install

1. Download the Toad for Oracle on Mac zip file
2. Double-click the zip file; macOS will automatically extract it to the current folder
3. Optionally copy the app folder to the Applications folder; macOS will prompt you to do so upon first run if run from any other location

Uninstall

1. Quit Toad for Oracle
2. Move the app folder to Trash
3. Removing the app does not remove Toad for Oracle's configuration files; delete ~/Library/Application Support/Toad for Oracle for complete removal

For more information about the products in your Toad for Oracle Edition and the minimum system requirements for running these products, see the Toad for Oracle Editions release notes at: https://support.quest.com/technical-documents

New Features and Enhancements

Toad for Oracle 2024 R2

Product Version

Toad for Oracle now uses a product version corresponding to the year of release, e.g 2024 R2 for the second release in 2024.

Toad for Oracle Subscription Editions

All Subscription Editions are available in an 'AI Enabled' version, which includes everything in the standard edition plus the AIExplain feature to assist with code comprehension. Read more about AIExplain at Toad World.

Oracle 23ai Support

• SQL Firewall (Database menu | Administer | SQL Firewall) Note: Requires DB Admin module
• Tablespace Shrink
• Logical Partition Tracking
• Open pluggable databases in hybrid read-only mode
• Hybrid partitioned tables with interval and auto list partitioning
• Rename LOBs without moving them
• Concurrent refreshes in materialized views
• Read-only users
• Enable/disable dictionary protection
• Individual columns in Unified Audit Policies
• VECTOR datatypes
• VECTOR indexes
• Staging tables
• Create Tablespace window defaults to 'bigfile'

Accessibility

• Improved keyboard navigation in Toad Options.
• Data Grid context menu activates with F10.
• Editor caret width is configurable (Toad Options | Editor | Display).
• Editor shortcut to toggle focus between dock panel and edit area (F6) is now customizable (Toad Options | Toolbars/Menus | Shortcuts).
• A new 'Focus Toolbars' feature has been added to the Window menu, enabling you to highlight and interact with a specific toolbar. You can navigate through toolbar buttons using the TAB key and activate them with ENTER. This feature can also be accessed via the customizable shortcut Ctrl+` (Toad Options | Toolbars/Menus | Shortcuts).
• A 'Docked Panels' feature has been added to the Window menu, allowing you to highlight a specific docked panel.
• Improved keyboard navigation in the 'Add Multiple Logins' and 'Edit Login' windows available from the database login window.

Schema Browser

• The roles filter now includes an option to exclude roles managed by Oracle.
• The 'Drop Index' confirmation dialog includes an option to drop any constraints that would otherwise prevent the index from being dropped, avoiding the ORA-02429 error. If selected, both the constraint and the index will be dropped.
• Custom queries and filters can be saved globally for a specific table name (Toad Options | Schema Browser | Data).
• The 'Data' tab filter utilizes the date format set in the options (Toad Options | Data Grids | Data).
• The base and log tables for Materialized View Logs are displayed on the 'Info' tab.
• Introduced the option to enable or disable Unified Audit Policies.
• Introduced icons to indicate whether Unified Audit Policies are enabled.

Editor

• Advanced options have been added to control editor rendering, enhancing appearance on high-DPI displays (Toad Options | Editor | Behavior).
• Shift + Right-clicking on a database object name displays the Schema Browser context menu.
• An option has been added to collapse all regions at any level when using 'Fold All' (Toad Options | Editor | Behavior).
• Single Record View displays the table name.

Connections

• An option has been added to disconnect after a specified period of inactivity (Toad Options | Oracle | Connections).
• A connection timeout option has been added to abandon slow connection attempts (Toad Options | Oracle | Connections). Applies to clientless connections only.

Data Grids

• Improved appearance on high-DPI displays.
• Rearranged the context menu to make the most frequently used feature easier to access.

Describe Window

• Introduced a refresh button.

SGA Trace/Optimization

• Renamed to 'Shared Pool Browser.'
• Individual statements can be purged from the shared pool.

Connection Colors

• Introduced a 'Suggest' feature to recommend a color based on user-defined rules.

Session Browser

• Introduced 'Styles' to the context menu of the 'Sessions' tab grid.

Font Dialog

• The font chooser dialog can be filtered and will retain your recent selections.

Create Constraint

• A warning is displayed if you are about to create a circular foreign key constraint.

Automation Designer

• Enhanced the placement of actions when double-clicking in the palette.

Code Insight

• An option has been added to filter by 'Contains text' or 'Starts with text' (Toad Options | Editor | Code Assist).

DB Health Scan

• Informational and statistical items no longer contribute to the pass/fail status.
• Failures are now reported as the count of failed checks instead of the total number of failures.

Compare Schemas

• 'ALTER TYPE' is utilized, when feasible, to synchronize types and prevent errors associated with 'CREATE OR REPLACE TYPE' when dependencies are present.

Compare Databases

• Introduced a preview panel.

Manage User Settings

• Introduced the ability to restore individual settings from backup.

Workspaces

• Introduced a 'Cancel' button to halt workspace loading.

Master-Detail Browser

• Added "Current Schema" option to make configuration files portable across different schemas with the same tables.

Project Manager

• A filter has been added to refine nodes.

Explain Plan

• Additional 'Copy to Clipboard' actions have been added to copy content as an image or XML.

Team Coding

• Introduced a 'Locked By' field in both the Schema Browser and the Editor.
• Introduced an option to designate either the operating system username or the database login username as the lock user.

utPLSQL

• Introduced support for utPLSQL 3.14.

Toad for Oracle 17.1

AIExplain

Using the power of AI, Toad examines your code providing an explanation of its purpose.

Note: AIExplain is available to Toad for Oracle Subscription users. Refer to the Knowledge Base for instructions on how to enable it. Learn more about AI and Toad at Toad World.

Toad for Oracle on Mac

• Improved Editor and Data Grid fonts
• Toad's File menu is merged into the macOS File menu
• The TNS_ADMIN location is more prominent

IPv6

IPv6 support has been extended to the following features:

• Clientless database connections
• SSH
• S/FTP
• RExec

Connections

• More prominent connection color border on Connection and Window toolbar buttons
• Menu items added to the "Session" menu allow for disconnecting sessions without closing associated windows
  • "Disconnect" and "Disconnect all" will leave the connection toolbar button intact as well as all associated windows, but the underlying session to the database will be terminated
  • "End Connection" in previously releases has been renamed "Close Connection" and functions the same as it always has; the underlying Oracle session is terminated and all associated windows are closed
• Audit and Access banner text is displayed for clientless connections
• Option to allow/prevent access to the SYS.USER$ table, allowed by default (View | Toad Options | Oracle | General | "Check for access to SYS.USER$")
• Option to include/exclude "as SYSDBA" in Connection toolbar button caption, shown by default (View | Toad Options | Toolbars/Menus | Toolbars | "Include 'as SYSDBA'")

Automation Designer

• Actions and apps can be disabled to prevent them from running
• Action properties can be modified in bulk
• Generate Schema Script action supports variables in the "Top Level Directory" field
• Generate Schema/Database Script and Compare Schema/Database actions support variables for connections and source/target schemas
• Export Dataset action now executes all statements in a script and exports the results of SELECT statements
• Execute Script action will automatically check ORA error codes added to the list of ignored errors
• Execute Script action property to "Notify on script error" suppresses all errors when unchecked, shown by default
• Email action supports content type (Plain Text or HTML)
• Improved saving of the underlying data file to better support multiple, concurrent running Toad instances

Schema Browser

• Quick filters can be saved per connection
• Ctrl+F in the left side places focus in the "Quick Filter" edit
• Commit/Rollback buttons enable only when in transaction
• Tablespace "Free Space" tab displays storage used by recycle bin
• "Create insert statements for all rows" supports "Data Masking"
• Tablespaces "Objects" tab now has a button to rebuild selected objects allowing you to move them to a new tablespace
• Tablespaces "Add > Datafile" now works across multiple selected tablespaces
• Tables "Indexes" tab has "Created"
• Tables "Stats/Size" tab has "Include indexes" checkbox
• Favorites persists node expansion state
• Some commands have configurable shortcuts (View | Toad Options | Toolbars/Menus | Shortcuts)

Compare Schemas

• Comparison includes EDITIONABLE

Data Grids

• Blob preview for PDF, XLSX, DOCX (first page), Text, Image, and Hex
• Customizable context menu

Trace File Browser

• Advice for more wait events
• "Wait Summary" histogram
• The worst performing SQL is highlighted in red
• SQL binds driven by a CURSOR loop are automatically identified
• "File Header" tab added to better organize data previously shown on the "Query Summary" tab
• "Wait Summary" tab includes min/avg column
• Notes can be added to a SQL statement
• "File Preview" includes start/end times, executions, fetches, and parses

Create/Alter Schedule/Scheduler Job

• Buttons for sample start and end times

Script Execution

• Summary grid summarizes the execution/fetch/total times, number of rows, and the SQL of the other data grids

Debugger

• Breakpoints persist between debugging sessions

Workspaces

• Auto Save and Load options are separate

Create Unified Audit Policy

• Added support for CONTAINER=ALL when connected to a root CDB

Toad Script Runner

• Use F2 to toggle full screen edit area
• Connection info shown in title bar matches Toad
• Improved tab navigation with a dropdown arrow to list all tabs

Session Browser

• Start and stop tracing across all database sessions
• Active filter name is displayed in the toolbar

Login Window

• Option checkboxes have been moved to the Settings dropdown menu, e.g. Save Passwords
• TNSPING button returns the output of tnsping.exe verbatim
• Focus is restored to the grid column that was focused when the window was last closed
• Option added to place focus in the grid or right side when opened

Spool SQL

• OCI Describe events are shown

Toolbars

• Close a connection/window by middle clicking on its toolbar button

Create/Alter Datafile

• Add multiple datafiles at once
• Find/Copy now lists the default disk group (ASM)

Tablespace Map

• Display the contents of a single datafile in multi-file tablespaces

Export DDL

• Much faster when exporting multiple objects

  Note: The order of statements and number of line breaks may differ when using "One file per schema" or "One file per object type" options

Team Coding

• Improved performance working with multiple objects, e.g. check in/out

Workspaces

• "Save" saves without confirmation
• "Save as" added
• "Delete" and "Rename" options show additional info about the workspace

Toad for Oracle 17.0

Toad for Oracle on Mac

Toad for Oracle Professional DB Admin edition is now available for Mac. Click here to download the free trial.

Oracle 23c

• Support for new features in Create/Alter windows, generated scripts, and elsewhere as appropriate:
  • ANNOTATIONS
  • Boolean datatypes
  • DEFAULT ON NULL FOR INSERT AND UPDATE
  • DOMAINS
  • IF [NOT] EXISTS
  • JSON-Relational Duality Views
  • PRECHECK Constraints
  • Schema-level privileges

Editor

• Data grids can be pinned allowing for multiple statements to be executed within a single tab without losing the results of the previous execution
• Option added to trim whitespace when saving files
• Improved performance when the Navigator option to "Show references" is unchecked; also applies to the Schema Browser when viewing PL/SQL objects
• Improved performance of parameter assistance for Oracle built-in functions defined within the SYS.STANDARD package, e.g. TO_CHAR()
• Added an option to the Script Output tab that synchronizes the Editor caret position with the active Script Output data grid and vice versa
• Exporting all Script Output data grids to an Excel file now produces a summary sheet
• Old, automatic backups are purged for improved performance
• Option added to enable utPLSQL integration if it is installed; unchecking this option improves performance by eliminating internal queries, but disables all Editor support for utPLSQL test suites

Connections

• SSH connections can be made natively without needing PuTTY or similar
• Clientless connections support TCPS protocol
• Common users having the SET CONTAINER privilege can easily switch between CDB and PDB instances via the Connection Bar context menu

Connection Colors

• An option has been added to fill Toad's title bar with the active connection's color when using a color scheme and connection colors

Trace File Browser

• Improved workflow when loading files from the database server
  • Option to exclude non-SQL trace files
  • Filter by file content, e.g. SQL ID, tablename, or any text that may exist in the trace file
  • Limit files to only those produced within a specified timeframe
  • Option to preview files after retrieval

Object Palette

• Option added to "Show Subobjects" that displays related objects (e.g. table constraints, grants, indexes, triggers, etc.) just like the Schema Browser's "Show LHS Subobjects" feature

Automation Designer

• Improved Action palette
• Export Dataset action can pass variables to SQL files as parameters

Data Grids

• Columns can be sorted even when the query contains an ORDER BY clause
• Find Data and Filter Data from the context menu allows searching and filtering across multiple columns
• A refresh button has been added to the Editor Data Grid to reexecute the query
• Single Record Viewer supports copying the column header and value to clipboard

Compare Schemas

• Options added to verify that tablespaces and Oracle features exists in the target database; any violations that will cause the sync script to fail are identified in the Difference Details tab

Generate Schema Script

• Added the ability to combine related objects when generating one script per object; for example, synonyms and grants with their target objects, type/package with its body, indexes with their table, etc.
• An option has been added to include schema name in object filenames
• An option has been added to include private synonyms for objects when exporting

Schema Browser

• Improved performance when selecting Procedures, Functions, and Packages
• Added the ability to pin quick filters

Session Browser

• "Kill Session" button added to the Locks tab
• "Status" column added to the Locks tab

Import Table Data

• Added the ability to create a new table from the Import Table Data wizard prior to importing

Workspaces

• New command line parameter for launching Toad and opening a specific workspace, e.g. Toad.exe -workspace my_favorite_workspace_name

Debugger

• A new "Check Privileges" menu item is available from the main Debug menu to check the active connection for the privileges required to debug

DB Health Scan (Preview)

DB Health Scan is a new window similar to DB Health Check with improved visualization of results. This window is a preview feature with additional improvements planned for a future release.

SQL*Net Editor

• Added support for SSL parameters

TNSNames Editor

• Added support for Retry Delay, Retry Count, and Compression parameters

Enhancements from Idea Pond

Discontinued Features

Knowledge Xpert. Knowledge Xpert is no longer available on Toad World. Beginning with release 13.1, Toad components no longer reference the online Knowledge Xpert.

Ask a Question. The Go to Toad World and Ask a Question commands on the Toad World toolbar have been replaced. To ask a question, click the Forums toolbar button to go directly to the forum. To go to Toad World, click the Forums or the Browse Blogs toolbar buttons. You can also use the Help menu: Help | Toad World | Forums. This change is found in Toad for Oracle 13.1 or later.

Integration with Toad Intelligence Central. Beginning with Toad for Oracle 13.1, Toad no longer provides integration with Toad Intelligence Central. The Toad Intelligence Central window is not available and you cannot publish scripts, files, Code Analysis results, and other resources to a Toad Intelligence Central server using Toad for Oracle. You cannot connect to Toad Intelligence Central through Toad for Oracle.