TOAD and PL/SQL Developer are some of the most popular tools for Oracle SQL development. All Oracle developers have heard about these. These are very well featured, and make it very easy to do your PL/SQL coding. However, both of them suffer from one common problem – they are not free. So, if you want to use them, you have to buy them.
I have been looking for free replacement for TOAD and PL/SQL Developer, and have found 4 good software that are completely free, and can be used to do your PL/SQL development. These provide a nice visual IDE, and are extremely easy to use.
SQL Developer
SQL Developer is the Free Oracle PL/SQL development tool that comes from Oracle itself. Oracle took quite some time to release a free PL/SQL development tool, but SQL Developer was worth the wait. SQL Developer has a very nice IDE, and is extremely feature packed.
- You can store connections to multiple DB.
- Supports Oracle, SQL Server, MySQL, MS Access, Sybase, and more.
- Built-in options to create all type of objects, like, packages, procedures, triggers.
- Nice SQL Builder
- Import data from Excel file, or CSV.
Read More Here. Download Here.
TORA
TORA is a free and open source Oracle development software. TORA not only provides features for PL/SQL development, but it also includes features for database management. So, it can be used by both Oracle developers, and Oracle DBA.
- Code completion
- SQL Syntax Highlighting
- Chart Visualization of Result.
- Very powerful debugging features.
- Statistics, Security, and Storage Manager.
Read More Here. Download Here.
DreamCoder
DreamCoder is like a younger brother of TORA. It has some Oracle development capabilities, and some database management capabilities.
- Integrated SQL Editor and Procedure builder.
- Session Monitor
- Blob viewer
- SQL Autocomplete
Read More Here. Download Here.
Free SQL Editor
Among all the free Oracle SQL developers mentiond above, Free SQL Editor is the smallest in size. It is a small free utility to do basic SQL development, and serves well if you are not involved in heavy Oracle coding. It keeps things simple for you.
- Syntax highlighting includes color highlighting.
- Explain Plan
- Execute Single and Multiple SQL statements.
- Multi-Thread execution.
Read More Here. Download Here.
All the above Free SQL development tools would make your Oracle development pretty comfortable. If you are paying for TOAD or PL/SQL developer, these free replacement of TOAD and PL/SQL developer will also save you some money.
If you are looking for a free Oracle database, use Oracle XE Free Edition.