ER: Better display of Substitution Variables

I think you guys are already thinking about changing things in this area but I was prompted to think about it by a colleague who highlighted an instance where they felt PL/SQL Developer was superior. He was referring to the Test Window and how you could define input and output variables in the lower tab, execute your query, and then view your output parameters (which were also defined as substitution variables). Handy for ref cursors apparently.

Anyway, my initial thoughts are a RHS docked window that listed the input and output parameters of my most recently executed SQL query (and/or an All tab to show all variables?). The important parts for me here are:

  1. I want to be able to see the parameters I just used in the execution of my query (without having to F9 to see them again)

  2. I want to be able to specify output parameters and view their contents. TOAD appears to handle output parameters but I don’t see a way of viewing their contents.

  3. I want the parameters to be dockable on the RHS so that I can view the Data Grid at the bottom (as I do at the moment), but view the parameters I used at the same time.

Bits I’m not sure about is whether the RHS Dock should be editable, a drop down list of recent values would be good, can we lose the substitution variables pop-up, should the RHS Dock be context aware - adjusting itself on whichever statement had focus - how would that handle F9/Shift+F9/highlighted queries, etc.

I’d also like a right click “Save Substituted Query” in the SE so that I can “save” my queries with the substitution variable values hardcoded in it so I can send it to colleagues - but I think that’s a different request.

Lots of ideas here, hopefully others might have some feedback on how we can better manage Substitution Variables.

Richard

REF Cursors can be viewed in the REF Cursors tab post-execution, but I agree
there’s room for improvement here.