Chapter 5. Using TOAD for Routine DBA Tasks

Although TOAD has historically been known as the Tool for Oracle Application Development, it is nonetheless a robust and capable database administrators' tool ” especially with the addition of the optional DBA module. In fact, through informal polls done at TOAD user group meetings, Quest has found that more than 40% of existing TOAD users are in fact DBAs or perform varying levels of DBA tasks. Thus TOAD has indeed become much more than just a SQL and PL/SQL developers' tool. It is now a legitimate DBA tool as well, competing with and often surpassing offerings such as Oracle's Enterprise Manager (OEM) and Embarcadero's DBArtisan.

Regardless of whether your job title includes the three letters DBA, you can and should use TOAD to perform any database administrative tasks that are necessary for your organization. For example, some companies hire database consultants and expect them to do everything, but other shops may have developer and DBA as separate job titles. From TOAD's perspective, it really does not matter. If you need to do any database administrative tasks, TOAD is the tool of choice. Thus any references that follow the term DBA really mean anybody who's doing database administrative tasks, regardless of their actual job title.

TOAD offers its numerous DBA capabilities through various menus and toolbars , which are organized by relative function and in conformance with Windows standards. But in practice, DBAs perform these tasks based upon need and often by scheduled interval. So to cover them based upon their menu or toolbar placement would be counterproductive. Therefore, all the DBA tasks are categorized into two simple groupings: routine and non-routine. This chapter covers those database administrative tasks that are considered routine.