Release Notes

Toad^® for Oracle 16.3

Release Notes

Revised 3/15/2023

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 Oracle 16.3 is a minor release, with enhanced features and functionality.

Toad for Oracle 16.3 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 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
• Toad Data Modeler

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

(Term and Perpetual Licenses)

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
• 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.

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 16.3

Editor

• New minimap with options to control position and scale

• Support for font ligatures

• Revamped brace highlighting options to provide additional behavior

• Search across all open Editor tabs from Find in Files/Editors

• Auto Replace options to include/exclude replacement within comments and strings

• Option to lock tab positions when multi-line tab mode is enabled

• Reload file/database object improvements to support reloading all items that have been modified

• Object name highlighting option to highlight dependencies from other schemas

• Navigator option to exclude PL/SQL parameters from sorting

• Navigator option to indicate PL/SQL parameter position

• Navigator option to show references

• Context menu is customizable

• Refactoring item to replace package constant references with their literal values

• Format Code can be canceled

• Additional user experience improvements

Schema Browser

• Object quick filter support for regular expressions

• Data tab filter dialog automatically adds quotes for IN/NOT IN conditions

• Data tab filter dialog options to save size/position

• Scheduler Jobs displays "subname" field on the Run Log tab

• Tables | Copy to another schema allows setting options as the default values used each time the window opens

• Tables | Copy to another schema options to create indexes/constraints when creating non-existent tables in the destination schema

• Create/Alter Materialized View option to specify the refresh group

• ID column added to the Arguments tab for PL/SQL

• Option to lock tab positions when multi-line tab mode is enabled

Color Schemes/Dark Mode

Additional schemes

Automation Designer

• New action to run reports configured in the Reports Manager

• New action to perform single column import

• Running apps can be canceled

• Execute Script action option to suppress the progress dialog

• Action palette buttons rearranged to be more intuitive

• Expanded copy to clipboard support to areas that previously lacked it

Data Grids

• Paste from clipboard across multiple selected cells

• Sort on multiple columns

• Context menu, Appearance submenu improvements

Export Dataset

• 7-Zip and gzip compression

• Query executed when "Display all results in grid" is unchecked can be canceled

• Flat File export option to set the end of line style

• Excel File export option to retry when the file is locked by another process

• Excel File/Instance export option to allow formulas which sets the Excel column formatting accordingly

Window Bar/Menu

• Ability to rename a window by right-clicking on its Window Bar button

• Option to show individual Editor tabs on the main Window menu

Login Window/Connections

• Create multiple logins at once applying the same properties across databases defined in tnsnames.ora

• Reconnect Lost Connections feature added to only reconnect sessions that are known to be disconnected

• Test Connections from the Login window improvements to update password if an ORA-01017 is raised and multiselect output

• Filter tabs when previously used connections are displayed using one of the "Tabbed by" views

• Toad Script Runner clientless connection support

• Retry button on the connection error dialog

• Messages configured using the SEC_USER_UNAUTHORIZED_ACCESS_BANNER and SEC_USER_AUDIT_ACTION_BANNER properties in the server's sqlnet.ora are displayed and acceptance is required to make the connection

• Custom field values can be modified when editing multiple login records

Export DDL

• Option to group object DDL into folders by their object type

• Option to exclude BEQUEATH clause from Views

SQL Recall

• Improved workflow when moving items from recently used to saved

• Options moved from the toolbar to a dedicated dialog to improve toolbar usefulness

• Additional display options and usability improvements

Manage User Settings

• Automatically backup key configuration files with options to configure what is backed up, the frequency, and a discard policy for old backups

• Ability to reset user files and selectively restore configuration files from a backup

Miscellaneous

• Team Coding automatically remaps object IDs which is necessary when controlled objects have been dropped and recreated

• Code Analysis option to limit the number of violations per rule type

• Compare Schemas produces an overall summary file in addition to each comparison's individual report when the multiple schemas option is used

• Various improvements to document recovery

• Various improvements to Master Detail Browser

• Many bugs fixes and other enhancements

Toad for Oracle 16.2

Data Grids

Improved formatting when copy/paste into applications that can accept HTML, e.g., Microsoft Teams, Microsoft Word, etc.

Fonts

Default fonts have been changed for an updated look. The default UI font is Segoe UI and the default Editor font is Consolas.

Color Schemes/Dark Mode

• Toad Script Runner now supports color schemes.

• Improvements to default Editor colors in dark schemes.

Login Window/Connections

• Clientless connections now support LDAP.

• Unchecking "Save passwords" requires confirmation.

• TNSNAMES Editor and LDAP Editor buttons have been moved to more relevant locations.

• Improved error handling and recovery when an ORA error is raised during connection initialization.

Automation Designer

• Improved performance with many apps/actions.

• Apps and folders can be cloned using copy/paste.

• Connections within the Connection Iterator action can be selectively enabled/disabled.

Editor

• Tabs for files modified externally have their captions updated to reflect the modification.

• A new word list has been added that can be used by you to set your own words to style how you see fit. See the "User List 1" list on the SQL tab (View | Options | Editor | Font and Styling).

Execute/Compile

• A new option has been added to check for locks prior to compiling (View | Options | Execute/Compile).

• Execute Snippet chooses better variable names when replacing PL/SQL references with bind variables.

Generate Schema Script, HTML Schema Doc Generator, and Compare Schemas

• Object set filters are saved as text files.

• Filter files can be specified in the respective actions for those windows in the Automation Designer.

Schema Browser

The right-click Clone/Copy user window now has a Show SQL button.

Describe Dialogs

Options added to remember the size and position (View | Options | Schema Browser | Describe Dialogs).

Compare Files

Shortcuts have been added for next/previous difference.

Toad Debug Mode

Toad debug mode has always been available via Toad.ini settings. Debug mode can now be enabled using controls within the Options window (View | Options | General). Use these options only when requested by Quest Support.

Toad for Oracle 16.1

Security

Several improvements to address OWASP Top 10 security risks.

Spool SQL

Pause and resume capture for a focused log.

Schema Browser

• Expanded subobject support

  • See the Show LHS Subobjects option located beneath the Browser Style tool button menu

• Team Coding status represented by images instead of text

Editor

• Find dialog options to exclude or limit search to comments and/or strings

• Active editor tab is more prominently displayed when using dark themes

• Send errors from the Script Output | Errors tab to external editor

Compare Table Data

An object in the target session matching the selected source object is automatically selected by default.

Script Manager

• Save and restore list of connections to execute against

• Add ability to clear all output

Connection Colors

Window border painting improvements for increased visibility.

DBMS Output

Improved speed performance when fetching output.

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.