[SGVLUG] DBA's and toad -- small world it seems...

[Emerson, Tom]

I'd held off on commenting about TOAD because I knew "we" [warner brothers] has several copies [as well as several DBA's and oracle databases] so there really wasn't much to say.  Admittedly, my interest was for setting up oracle "at home" to tinker with it and remain a viable resource when my current puts-bread-on-the-table job [contract] runs out.  Buying "toad" for myself would be a bit prohibative, so I decided to check it out to see if there was a "personal" version and what might apply.

Imagine my surprise to find out that "toad" is written by the folks at Quest Software over in Irvine -- As it turns out, I'm already QUITE familiar with Quest software: they write programs for the HP3000 (one in particular is a product called "netbase" that effectively turns two HP boxes into a "raid mirrored" version of the database -- writes to one database are reflected on the other, but I digress)  To be honest, however, I hadn't been following along as to their non-HP software, which I now see is rather extensive.

I was also going to mention I have a program on MY desktop called "sql navigator 3", which I noticed was "remarkably similar" to what I see on other user's desktops who are using "toad".  It didn't dawn on me as to why until just now when I started looking around -- guess who wrote THIS program?  [hint: starts with "Q", and means to go on a long journey in search of the answer]

Also, while I was searching, another familiar term caught my eye, and I eventually landed at this page:  (note how the URL gives away the punchline)

     http://www.quest.com/toad_for_mysql/index.asp


apparently, this is a new product.  (and, ironically, this is one you have to pay for -- "toad for SQL server", however, is freeware... [that you have to re-download every 60 days])