Project Raptor

Project Raptor has escaped (software isn't released, it just sometimes escapes).

I downloaded it at work and had a quick play. Overall I liked it a lot. People used to products like TOAD won't see much new. The biggest advantage I've seen is that you don't seem to need any extra Oracle software installed. Just copy the software on to the machine, enter the IP address, the port and the SID/Service Name and you've got a connection.

Of course, the other big advantage is that it's free.

There's been some interesting discussion of Raptor over on Tom Kyte's blog.

I agree that it's probably not for the hardcore DBA, not as a primary tool anyway.

Where I can see me probably using it is as something I can give to the non-DBAs who happen to do some DB management (we have a lot of them where I work). I'll have to investigate it further to make sure that it's reasonably safe to let them use it though. I haven't had a chance to read much of the docs yet and haven't been able to hit the forums.

For my own use I can see me possibly putting it on a USB thumb drive so if I'm away from my desk and have to use a PC which doesn't have the Oracle client installed I can just plug it in and connect to a database if needed.

Actually, I'm going to be launching an internal Oracle Users Group in the organisation I work for in the next month or so, a demonstration of Raptor would probably be a good opening gambit to get people interested.