Navicat 8 for Oracle Overview by Salva Castro 2009-04-03
Source: http://www.genbeta.com
 
 



Few days ago I was reviewing several alternatives tools for Oracle database administration for Mac, one of them is Navicat for Oracle. Representatives from Navicat contacted us to offer a full version to review and that is what occupies to us right now, so we are going to review version 8 of Navicat in this case for Windows.

In this review, we will try to evaluate various aspects of this application and focusing more on the use of Query Builder, PL/SQL Editor and Report Builder (in case of Enterprise Version).

Navicat is a tool that offers great possibilities that is something simple to use and manageable, this may cause a false product impression of too primitive, but what’s real is that, under Navicat’s user friendly interface, underlying is a powerful tool for querying, development of PL/SQL code and making reporting easy, fast and direct.

As soon as we start the application and the connection (we previously set up access to the / s base / s of data you want, allows reading of TNSnames course) using one of the connections, we got the general view to see the views, tables, stored procedures and the Report Builder.

The Query Builder comes with the typical tools of an application of these characteristics, can write SQL code without problems, has code completion when writing and it offers:

  • Query Builder: basically we can build query visually, without remembering code, similar to how you would do in the well-known tools for Microsoft SQL Server or Access. Interface is good because we can see the code that we will generate and interact with it.

  • Query Editor: the editor par excellence, where we can write SQL code.

  • Message: tells us the result of the execution and notify us of any failure or syntax errors that have occurred during the execution.

  • Results: where the results of our query will unfold in format grid or in the form of form.
Besides the typical functionalities to execute queries, to stop queries, to keep the code in files from text
and to see the execution plan (that I have not been able to unfold, although it had all the requirements for it,
it seems that bug is some there), it is necessary to mention Export Wizard, which can export the results, within three or four steps will allow us to keep the data extracted in several formats: text, csv, Access, Excel, Word, XML and more, as you see in the image.







PL / SQL Editor



Another aspects of Navicat is to incorporate a fantastic code editing tool (with colored and aid to the programming) that allows to develop stored procedures, to compile them and to as much keep them in the database like in a file.
Also we have a process monitor and a direct access to SQLPlus to help us in the edition task and test of our code.

Reports Builder



The Report Builder is quite powerful, allows you to personalize and to adapt the data into a report, creating different types of graph. Although this is not a professional tool for reporting, it does allow great potential for personalization, such as selecting the graphics, which amazingly allows many different types of graphics in both 2D and 3D.

Conclusion

Navicat is an alternative to consider since it has a quite competitive cost on licenses among other similar products. Is it worth paying more than US$100 instead of using SQL Developer for free? Well, that depends, as I always say let’s use it and the evidence convinced us it’s more than another tool in my opinion, I like most to work with Navicat than other open source alternatives.

If you are not willing to buy a retail version, you may consider to use the Lite version which is free and that at least cover the most basic needs of a person who want to quickly and easily a database environment.

Navicat is also available in PostgreSQL and MySQL, and that also offers version for Mac OS X and Linux (does not have Linux version for Oracle). Thanks to the people of Navicat to grant a version to us of testing.