The Triora Group

I’ve been looking recently at database tools that are available.  There’s a lot of good ones out there like Oracle Enterprise Manager and TOAD, just to name two of them.  TOAD seems to be a favorite because of its powerful features, but it is fairly expensive unless your company is footing the bill.

The interesting thing about tools is that our preferences are very personal.

I’ve got friends who have developed their own tools using html.  They’ve come up with some nifty reporting capabilities using simple html, a local install of Apache and some sql queries.

Others believe that using a database tool is an admission of ignorance or lack of skills and they rely on trusty SQLPLUS and all of the database views/scripts.

Back in 1999 I sat down and wrote a set of tools for managing the Oracle database using Visual Basic.  It had the ability to compare schemas and objects between different databases which helped me do better change management.  It would analyze various statistics and provide a report card on the database configuration.  Unfortunately it fell victim to my lack of time to support it and my promotion to managing a large group of people.

While I was looking around on the internet I came across one that was new to me, named ‘TOra’.  It’s an open-source database tool that works with Oracle, MySQL, PostgreSQL or any ODBC database.

With the choice of tools being a personal preference, there’s always room for one more.  I’ll admit upfront that I’ve not had much time to test all of TOra’s capabilities but if you are looking at a low-cost alternative, it’s one to check out.  You can download a copy from http://tora.sourceforge.net

One of the interesting facts is that TOra will work under both Windows and Unix.  And was originally designed as a Unix data management tool.

I downloaded the Windows version and installed it without issues.  I had to go to Oracle’s website and download the “Instant Client” libraries to finish things up.  You can find them at http://www.oracle.com/technology/tech/oci/instantclient/index.html

You also may need to install SQLNET as well but you probably already have that, right?

TOra  comes with instructions on how to extend its capabilities on your own.  And it has decent Help files as well.

Overall I’m very impressed with the direction they’ve taken with this tool and am excited that the Open-Source community is working in this space.  I hope you’ll give them your support!

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