SQL Developer 2.1 Early Adopter -- Still More Impressions

Holy Memory Leak, Batman. The good news is that although my memory usage on SQLDeveloper has crept up to 775MB this morning before getting slow enough to have to kill it, it did manage to save the file and somewhat interact at that point. It used to be that once it had crept up to about 600MB that it would just go blank and be useless. So, now it seems to tolerate the memory problems better, but still has a problem with memory consumption gradually creeping up to intolerable levels as time goes on.

So, what was I doing that cost all this memory?
I had 5 text files open (not huge files, mind you -- all less than 1000 lines), no database connections open, and I was editing one of the files (Search and Replace, Ctrl-G to go to a line, edit, save, copy paste -- just normal editing). That's it.

Looks like I will have to kill from the Task Manager, as it didn't shut itself down all the way.

SQL Developer has always done this to me. I'm a Developer, so I open the tool in the morning and keep it open. Originally, I had to kill around 2 in the afternoon. With version 1.5.5, I had to kill around 11 in the morning and 2 in the afternoon. With the new version, it looks like I still have to kill, but it manages to use even more memory before I have to kill it.

I've been trying to get my company to switch from TOAD to SQLDeveloper, but nobody else can stand all the bugs. TOAD is a hog, too, and I haven't used it seriously for a couple of years, but the TOAD guys aren't having to kill twice a day. One of the guys on the team really wants to use SQLDeveloper, but he's on Vista and SQLDev is absolutely unbearable on Vista.

Makes me wonder if I'm an idiot for continuing to be a SQLDeveloper junkie. I love the tool, but it's never been smooth, seamless, or reliable. Kinda like driving a DeLorean or something. Well, maybe more like a Yugo. No, it's way cooler and more useful than a Yugo, but certainly not as sleek or fast as a DeLorean. Hmmm.....how about an old Dodge 4x4 truck. Love it to death, it's powerful, cheap and useful, does way cool stuff, but it might die any minute. Maybe I like it because I have a Gambler streak in me and just want to see if I can beat the odds.

SQL Developer 2.1 Early Adopter -- More Impressions

I like the new SQL Formatter changes. I really like the live previewer so that you can test a setting and see if it does what you think it's going to do. Very nice. My one complaint that I've always had with the SQL Formatter is that it seems to be less aware of PL/SQL. It handles SQL beautifully. Actually, this is a complaint I've had about Oracle products in general for years. SQL Developer has, in a lot of ways, been the answer to that void. However, the formatter still seems somewhat ignorant of PL/SQL. Interestingly, the formatter settings didn't migrate from the previous version very well until I went in and edited the settings, saved them as SQL and then restarted. The tabbing is weird. I have mine set at 4. Half of the tabbing works correctly at 4, but a bunch of other tabbing switches over to the default tab size of 2. Hope that gets fixed. If I use the "tabulator" (never have figured out what that means), then the indentation mostly disappears entirely -- one line works, then the rest move 4 spaces to the left of where they should be. There are a zillion options in the formatter. Tough to find documents, though. I really wish that the formatter would format DECODE statements correctly. Namely, that there be one value/translation pair per line.

Ctrl-Enter -- no longer runs a Select statement. Has to be F9 now. Also, a statement no longer runs with & as a prompted parameter, but if you run it as a script, it will. Using a ':' as the bind variable seems to work fine. Seriously, though, after all these years of making me learn to use Ctrl-Enter, we now switch to F9?

Case switching works a lot better with Ctrl-Quote now. It used to require clicking the mouse option first. And, there's a button now.

There's a button for an unshared worksheet now -- locking it into the current connection. That might be useful.

More later...

SQLDeveloper 2.1 Early Adopter -- second impression

130 MB memory -- seems smaller. We'll see if it creeps up to 600MB and then hangs like it always has in the past.

It feels a lot faster. Maybe I'm just too excited.

One of the things I have to check is the Excel import/export. I also need to try out the Data Modeler viewer. However, I should probably do some work...

Ya know, it's kinda sad to see what kind of things get me excited. And, should I be on an Early Adopter version? Probably not for production work, but I just can't really help myself. :)

SQLDeveloper 2.1 Early Adopter -- First Impression

It knew where to pick up my previous settings!! I'm already in love.

SQLDeveloper -- I'm so outdated

Early Adopter version 2.1 has been out since the 24th of September and I'm just loading it now. I'll whine about it later......