OraTransplant

OpenWorld: Project Raptor – watch out TOAD

20 September 2005 at 00:53 CEST | In Database, Features and tips, Features and tips, JDeveloper, OpenWorld 2007, Oracle |

Oracle released an Early Access version of project Raptor. This made much of the following article obsolete as you can now see for yourself.

I just attended a session about new developments by the Server Technologies’ Database Division. One of the most interesting things (for me) was the short demo of project Raptor. This is the long awaited visual tool for database development. It could be a real competitor for the well known TOAD product from Quest. They did a short demo in which you could view and alter all the known database objects. The also showed some PL/SQL development features including code formatting and a powerful debugger. The session was also about other new developments in database 10gR2 and coming releases. This mean there was only a couple of minutes to demo project Raptor but it was really interesting. A lot of people approached the speaker afterwards to ask about Raptor.

It looked very familiar to me (knowing JDeveloper). It doesn’t require an Oracle client, just as JDeveloper. It’s just a matter of unzipping and start running. Looking at the screen it looks like it just makes a JDBC connection. It’s based on the JDeveloper framework but it is much more powerful then the existing database and PL/SQL editing features in JDeveloper. As I understood it will eventually replace the current database and PL/SQL editing in JDeveloper in some feature release. But before that, project Raptor will be offered as a standalone product on OTN. Due to all the new regulations Oracle people cannot give estimated delivery dates other then “this fiscal year”. For Oracle that means before May 31st 2006, but the speaker told me he expects it on OTN very soon.

I used my digital camera to make some photos of the demoed screens. The unfortunate thing is that I forgot to bring my USB cable to the Moscone center, so I can’t upload the pictures before this evening. Check back again to see the screenshots.

Some of the other things discussed in the session were Oracle Secure Backup, Patch distribution by Enterprise Manager Grid control 10gR2, TimesTen in-memory database, XQuery, Transparent data encryption, HTML-DB and two new security features: AuditVault and DataVault.

To me, TimesTen and AuditVault were the most interesting as they seemed to target actual business problems we are having right now. I’ll have to look into both technologies when I’m back at the office. I guess attending OpenWorld will take more then just the one week I’m here. I get the feeling I have a couple of weeks work when I get back in checking out all the new stuff I discover here.

PS. On a more personal note: congratulations to my wife for our second wedding anniversary. Couldn’t think of a better/more romantic way to celebrate it than to be on my own in San Francisco visiting a tech conference

Update 19-sep-2005 18:30: I’ve just returned to my hotel room to connect my digital camera to my laptop and upload the pictures. I didn’t want to use my flash when making the pictures during the session so I needed quite a long shutter time. Unfortunately that made the first picture kind of blurry. Nonetheless I will post all three pictures below. You can click on any of the pictures to get a bit larger view.

If you want to get the full size images, you can find them here, here and here.

The first screenshot is the blurry one but you can (hardly) see the tree control showing all database objects and the code editor for stored PL/SQL. The second shot shows the context menu including the Format SQL option for code formatting. The third and final shot shows the debugger in action. You can see all variables in the lower right corner. By the way: hovering over a variable in the code editor will show its value as a tooltip. You can also see the debug console at the lower end of the screen and the call stack in the lower left. I must say Raptor looked very promising for the five minutes we got to look at it. Let’s hope Oracle will show it at the demogrounds later this week and for the screenshots Brian has promised.

I’m off to the OTN underground event. Check back tomorrow for more updates on OpenWorld.

Update 21-sep-2005: Raptor was just briefly demoed during the keynote of Chuck Rozwat. Unfortunately I was watching the keynote in an overflow room where the screen is too small to make any good pics. If anyone attended the keynote in the big room and made some usable pics, you can contact me to put them up here.
I’ll have a look at Raptor at the HTML DB demoground myself, but I doubt they will let me near it with a camera

Update 22-sep-2005: Brian Duff has just published some real screenshots for project Raptor. These actually have some detail compares to mu blurry pictures.

Update 31-dec-2005: Added a comment at the top of the article about the release of an Early Access version of project Raptor.