Toad World® Forums

Discoverer compared to TOAD, for Oracle DB reporting

#1

For the role of DBA, we outsource to a qualified 3rd party for maintenance of our Oracle based ERP system.

We purchased the Discoverer v.10g BI tool at the same time and setup included creation of some Discoverer reports (or views; i’m not always clear which is which)

Not one of our team has advanced beyond basic beginner status with any of the Discoverer capabilities.

One of our team has accepted the report writing role and uses TOAD to create views and port the data over to excel for further manipulation and formatting. This same person claims TOAD far exceeds Discoverer capabilities. My DBA states they are two completely different tools.

Is there anyone here that could provide a simple description of the differences between these two resources?

Do both tools have a valid role for differing purposes, or, do they accomplish the same result by different means?

Thanks in advance for your input.

Amy

#2

Hi Amy,

I’m not an expert in Discoverer but essentially it’s an ad-hoc query/reporting tool which is just a small portion of what the Toad tools do. Also Discoverer is being phased out by Oracle (here is a link to their statement of direction: www.oracle.com/…/discoverer-sod-jan2009-132849.pdf). If you are looking for something that would be comparable and do quite a bit more I would look at Toad Data Point.

Thanks!

Kevin

#3

I was able to gather some additional info and wanted to update this post in the event it helps anyone else!

The version of TOAD that we use is a database administration tool and basically gives the user “God Privileges” to every corner of the db. An inexperienced user could cause real problems with a whoops keystroke.

The Discoverer v we have is stable and not a worry as per the link above, but thanks for the chance to confirm all that with my DBA.

In Discoverer are several sections, one of which is Discoverer Admin. It is this section that our TOAD user should be getting smart about (or relinquishing willingly to the dba).

The business areas are already created. The DiscAdmin creates the end user layer to meet requirements. We are using the wrong tool for the job. That’s what I suspected and I’ve got it confirmed.

My DBA uses TOAD and Discoverer, both, depends on what needs doing. And he advises that only he should use TOAD, no one else in our company has the qualifications to use it without risk.

ok then, thanks for listening and hope this helps anyone else.

cheerios

amy

#4

Hi Amy,

Sounds like you got the answers you needed. One point of clarification to what your DBA said. The “God Privileges” are granted by the DBA and Toad can make use of them if the user has them. Toad does not grant privileges on it’s own and it obeys whatever security has been put in place by the DBA. Toad also has a read-only mode available which prevents users from making changes to the database.

Thanks!

Kevin