PaulB-TheOneAndOnly (2/8/2013)
nick.mcdermaid (9/20/2012)
In Oracle, client tools are painful. You need to buy TOAD for a GUI, and has some good features (CTRL-Clkick to get table info) but it's basically a dogs breakfast.SQL Developer is a free GUI by Oracle that pretty much does all that is needed - also, web based OEM is pretty good and offers stuff I have not seen in any other GUI like the capabiltiy to run and check AWR reports, real time tracing, etc.
TOAD is pretty bad at closing connections, I know production environments where it has been banned.
If looking for a third party GUI I would go with DBArtisan.
Oracle SQL Developer is an OK tool, and it can even support connections to a few other database engines like SQL Server, MySQL, and MS-Access. However, it's not as polished as SQL Server Management Studio. SQL Developer is written in Java, which I guess is a plus for some people who develope across different client platforms, but like most all Java apps I've found the tool to be sluggish and occasionally hang.
"Do not seek to follow in the footsteps of the wise. Instead, seek what they sought." - Matsuo Basho