SQL Detective

I saw some full page ads from Conquest Corporation in the latest issue of Oracle Magazine. They were compelling advertisements. So I decided to try and download two of their new products.

Unfortunately, one of the download links did not work. The other one downloaded fine. However after installation, I could not figure out how to work the product. Was not sure what the heck the thing did either.

This exercise was almost a bust. However I was given the opportunity to downloaded Conquest's flagship product. It is SQL Detective. Once again I was unsure from the hype what this tool did exactly. After downloading I found it to be like PL/SQL Developer or Toad.

Here are my first impressions. Logon took a long time. The default layout is not intuitive. You type you SQL statement below the results window. You have to use a window scroller to get more query results (I prefer a button). There were some positive features though. I like having an explain plan tab. You can also click the users node in the tree and figure out who has accounts in your database.

The pricing page on the web was not intuitive either. I determined that the bare bones edition cost $136. For that price, I did not find any SQL Detective features which would make me abandon PL/SQL Developer, which I use for my customer's work. At least Conquest had a compelling enough marketing in their ad to get me to give it a try.