Create insert for selected rows

Guest · June 7, 2010, 5:15pm

Just moved up to Toad 10.5 (full, not free version). I noticed that a couple of features are suspiciously missing.

In the schema browser’s data tab, there used to be an option to create insert statements based on the selected row(s), which would be a one-click way of putting an insert statement into the clipboard. You can do it now using the Export Dataset option, but it’s about 6 clicks now, and it saves your options so if you do both exporting data and insert statements, it’s about 6 clicks every time. Is there a way to turn it back on the context menu?

Also, there was an option to filter by current value when you right-click on a value - looks like this is totally gone - I can filter normally by typing in the WHERE clause, but the one-click filter is missing.

Anyone have any insight on either of these two items? I know Toadsoft wanted to consolidate since there were 1500 ways of doing the same things, but making things less convenient doesn’t seem to be the right answer.

Thanks

Joe

HillbillyToad · June 7, 2010, 5:19pm

1 – Yes, you need to use the right-click export dataset

2 – Click on the filter dropdown, there’s an option there for the
filter by value

Guest · June 7, 2010, 5:29pm

Jeff:
#1: My point was that it used to be a simple matter of 1 or 2 clicks - it was a feature I used all the time, and now I have to go through a whole screen, paying attention to a half a dozen options in order to accomplish this. The old way was much easier and faster, so I’m hoping there’s a way to turn that back on.

#2: Thanks - I didn’t realize that was there. Looks like it’s exactly what I was looking for, but it’s still a little less convenient, since now I have to click on the data, then move over to the little drop-down arrow and choose from that menu, as opposed to selecting from a context menu clicked on from the data I care about.

Thanks

HillbillyToad · June 7, 2010, 8:12pm

I hear you on the clicks.

I was just confirming what you already suspected, that’s the
‘new’ way to do things.

Guest · June 7, 2010, 8:42pm

Yep, isn’t it wonderful that software companies know what’s best for us?

NormTeamT · June 8, 2010, 2:11am

Morning Joe,

it's always a PITA when we upgrade for version a to version b, I agree,
but change is necessary. It's progress and sometimes things are done
differently in this version to how they were in the last. We users only
see the finished product and not the decisions and all the rest that
were taken to get to the finished product from the starting product.

Yep, isn't it wonderful that software companies know what's
best for us?
You mean like on Windows when you have to click "start" to shut down?
What's that all about then?

Or, put windows on a desktop? Where I come from we have windows on the
walls!

Or, you buy a DVD drive to put in your PC and play HD DVDs. But because
your drive has an HDMI output socket, Windows decides that you cannot
now watch HD quality on your desktop and degrades it to normal DVD
quality?

And don't start me on Apple's iThis and iThat either! Ok, too late -
there's no flash on the iPad or the iPhone - so about 70% (allegedly) of
the internet is unavailable to you.

Trying to find a replacement set of headphones for your iPhone is next
to impossible (or was) because of the "design" of the recessed socket to
force you to buy Apple's vastly over-priced and under-quality ones
instead?

So yes, software companies do know what's "best" for you, and me, and
everyone else.

Seriously though, the changes came about because of user requests for a
standard way to access various features of Toad across the whole
interface. In the SB you did it one way, in the results grid or F4 you
did it another and so on. Toad has been built to try and compromise on
what everyone wanted. Check out the beta list archives for the full gory
details if you have time.

And, trust me, you'll soon get used to it. As I did.

Good luck.

PS. And some of the new stuff is a by product of other third party
component suppliers telling the developers what's good for them as well!

Cheers,
Norm. [TeamT]

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NormTeamT · June 8, 2010, 2:12am

Ps. Software companies, food companies, car manufacturers, sweet (candy)
companies, book shops - the list is endless I’m afraid. You and I have
little choice in many matters.

Cheers,
Norm. [TeamT]

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Guest · June 8, 2010, 4:40am

SEE ATTACHMENT

Guest · June 8, 2010, 4:40am

SEE ATTACHMENT

Mark_Lerch · June 8, 2010, 8:06am

Thank you Norm. It’s always heartening to hear a well thought out response from a user, especially when it contrasts so sharply with sarcasm coming from one of our own employees.

Mark

Mark_Lerch · June 8, 2010, 8:06am

Thank you Norm. It’s always heartening to hear a well thought out response from a user, especially when it contrasts so sharply with sarcasm coming from one of our own employees.

Mark

NormTeamT · June 8, 2010, 8:21am

Hi Mark,

Thank you Norm. It's always heartening to hear a well
thought out response from a user, especially when it
contrasts so sharply with sarcasm coming from one of our own
employees.
I can see both sides having been a developer of commercial products in
the past and as a user of same. It's easy to criticise - and I do, often

when things change, but it's best to criticise from a position of
knowing the facts.

I have to confess to falling into the trap myself occasionally, but
don't we all?

I remember upgrading to the MOE when that came out. I hated the fact
that everything was different - so I can see Joe's point. And maybe his
tone was meant to be amusing, I don't know, a forgotten smiley too
perhaps? That's the problem with the written word, it can be
misunderstood.

Hopefully, he'll come to know and love the new way as much as the old.

Equally, regarding the sarcasm, it's not nice when something you love,
have worked on, slaved over and perfected (as much as perfection is
possible) is criticised. People get possessive and react "aggressively"
against all criticism. I well remember the first time my "pride and joy"
bit of code was chosen for peer review and slated horrendously!

I was horrified. But, given that the criticism was constructive, I was
able to work on it and produce a better application in the end. Peer
review works!

Cheers,
Norm. [TeamT]

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Guest · June 8, 2010, 9:07am

Thanks for the commends Norm and Mark. Just to be clear, my opinion is that I’m ok with change as new versions are released, so long as they do not permanently make things more difficult.

For example: Microsoft makes Windows significantly different with every new version - most of the changes are unnecessary, but once you get to know them, it’s no more difficult than before to accomplish your tasks, and often easier. One exception is the taskbar in Win7 - I had 35+ icons in my Quick Launch in XP (and yes, I did use all of them regularly), along with 2-3 rows available for running programs. With Win7, I can pin no more than about 20 icons to my taskbar now, so the number of one-click icons is decreased, as is the number of open programs I can one-click to activate. In my opinion, this new taskbar has its benefits, but it also permanently makes certain tasks more difficult, and is a valid complaint. A compromise here might have been to introduce multiple independent taskbars like some Linux desktops, or multiple rows or columns on the taskbar.

Same goes for Toad. I know the developers/business owners wanted to make things more consistent - after all, there are many different ways of doing many of the tasks available in Toad, so it can be confusing. But taking a feature that in my opinion was one of the nicest things about the product, the one-click “create insert statements”, and turning it into a multi-purpose menu with a half dozen options to deal with, is anti-productive for the end-user. A possible compromise could have been a setup screen where the user can define what they want to see in the context menu when right-clicking on the grid - “create insert statements” would be off by default, but it would be a simple option to turn this feature back on. This would allow users who are used to the “old way” to continue to use it, while leaving it off for new users or people who don’t need it.

I don’t mean to pick on Toad. Everyone does it with their new versions. As a software developer, I’m sure I’m guilty of doing it once or twice in my applications. And in my opinion, Toad is still the best product out there. But while some change leads to simple confusion that can be solved, actually taking features away or making them more difficult can lead to the kinds of complaints that drive customers away.

So I apologize if my rant was unfairly pointed at any Toad employee. Please take my comments as constructive criticism and ignore my tone, since I’ve never really been good at the whole smiley-face thing, as Norman may have guessed…

:o]

Joe

Mark_Lerch · June 8, 2010, 10:21am

Hi Joe- not at all, all criticisms are welcome. We are thick skinned enough. I was referring to something else entirely.

Regarding your case, there have been a lot of complaints. The only point I would make is that we also have to deal with complaints and inputs from large corporate customers, from feedback coming from product management who do onsite visits, and user surveys and so forth. So it’s a juggling act. We will sometimes get it wrong and make mistakes. As long as we can discern what is best for the most we’re ok. We don’t want to rollback significant changes at the first few loud complaints, because many will always resist change, no matter what. And we have heard some users say that they are relieved at the product-wide consistency with grid menus. I even have private emails from Quest employees who praised the decision to me personally, then come on here publicly and criticize us for doing it. Sad, but true. I’ve given up trying to figure out their motives or character.

In an ideal world, all the users would be in the same community forum, and voice their opinions of things and let other users support them or contradict them. And the best result for the most would bubble up to the R&D team to implement. Many of you will remember that is close to how it was 11-13 years ago. A great percentage of the users were here on the boards, and the product was created around their collective feedback so our percentage of hitting the mark was pretty high. Now we have ever larger inputs from other sources we need to balance as well as an ever-growing product size.

Toad used to be just for the individual developer. Now it’s also for large corporations which must standardize on things.

The idea of being able to customize grid menus has been floated before. I think it could be a good one. My one concern there would be - what happens when someone customizes it and then can’t find certain things, forgetting that they customized it? Believe it or not we get complaints from people who customize their main product menu then complain that we removed functionality, when it was they who removed it! “Well why did you let me do that, custom menus are a dangerous and dumb idea!”

But we should discuss your idea.

All of this makes me think of one of the most important principles in astrophotography: improving the signal to noise ratio. : )

Guest · June 8, 2010, 10:40am

Mark:

Thanks for the insight. I’ve never worked on a product that had an audience of more than a couple dozen or maybe a couple hundred people, so I guess I never had to deal with everything you guys do. But I can definitely empathize with the internal politics problems - I’ve had to deal with that kind of thing in previous companies as well.

I do see your point about the menu - with a product as large as Toad, it is possible to accidentally lose things, so I suppose if you implemented something like that, it might make people like me happy, while causing headaches for some not-as-powerful-power users. I hope the benefits are decided to outweigh the risks in future versions, but if not, I can understand that decision.

Thanks

Joe

Mark_Lerch · June 8, 2010, 11:27am

yeah we now exceed a million users I’m told, for the commercial product, who knows how many more for freeware and product which is stolen, which in some countries is a huge amount. The ratio of developers to users has to be one of the smallest in history. No joke! By the time a product reaches this much revenue and user base most companies would have at least half a dozen developers on it. : )

anyway Joe, are you on the beta? That’s where we experiment with new ideas.

Guest · June 8, 2010, 12:16pm

Yep, isn't it wonderful that software companies know what's best for us?

Ahh… but is this a case where the “software company knows
what’s best for us”? Or … is it a case that “we”
have provided a ton of enhancement requests and all those requests – when
added together – have created the more complex mechanism we are seeing?

While it’s true that Quest has to work constantly to keep Toad for Oracle
up-to-speed with the changes Oracle makes, it’s also true Quest implements
a LOT of the suggestions that we the users ask for.

“Be careful for what ye ask for, you might just get it!”

Roger S.

Guest · June 8, 2010, 2:15pm

Are you serious that you don’t even have a half dozen devs on Toad? I would have expected 20 or 30 easily for a product this big, broken out into sub-groups on maybe 4 or 5 distinct product areas.

I’m not on the beta - I may look into it. I did the Windows 7 beta - I reported maybe 10 or 15 issues - and I kind of enjoyed it, and I’ve done a few smaller betas like Visual Studio and various browsers. It’s nice to be able to get the latest and greatest before everyone else, and get my voice added.

eklinger · June 8, 2010, 2:42pm

When you have top notch people you don't need as many as you would think.

Here are most of then right here

Ed
[TeamT]

On 6/8/2010 3:15 PM, Joe Enos wrote:

Are you serious that you don't even have a half dozen devs on Toad? I would have expected 20 or 30 easily for a product this big, broken out into sub-groups on maybe 4 or 5 distinct product areas.

I'm not on the beta - I may look into it. I did the Windows 7 beta - I reported maybe 10 or 15 issues - and I kind of enjoyed it, and I've done a few smaller betas like Visual Studio and various browsers. It's nice to be able to get the latest and greatest before everyone else, and get my voice added.

Guest · June 8, 2010, 2:50pm

Hey, John, nice shirt! Did you get that at the boardwalk in A.C.? I think my
retina detached.

Best regards,
Mike