Login as sysdba connection misleading

When you create a new session in TOAD, if you inadvertently have “Sysdba” selected in the “Connect as:” drop down, and you have dba authority on the DB, TOAD will connect you as “SYSTEM”, but display the value in the “User / Schema” dialog box in the connection string tabs.

This is totally misleading, TOAD should display “SYSTEM”, not the account. I encounter it when I open the connection dialog. The previous connection is displayed, I update the User / Schema and password fields, but forget to change “Connect as” to normal. TOAD logs me as as “SYSTEM”, but displays the account I just entered in the User / Schema text field.

This led to 30 minutes of wasted time yesterday when I attempted to fix a DBLINK, but the programmer using it complained it was still broken. My tests showed it was good. Only after much gnashing of teeth did I discover I was logged in as SYSTEM, not the account displayed on the session tab.

I believe that in the past, Toad used to have SYS as the the user if you connected SOMEONE as SYSDBA, then users asked for SOMEONE to be shown instead.

I agree that it would be nice to have some kind of SYSDBA indicator, maybe on the connection bar button or something. It does say SYSDBA on the hint if you hover over it, but that’s not very obvious.

I understand it is difficult to please everyone, especially in such a widely used product such as TOAD.

Once connected, It seems to me that my primary concern is not the account with which I connected , but the account whose permissions I am using. I definitely want to be more careful with SYSDBA than I do with other accounts.

In this case, I was totally deceived by what TOAD was showing me. I was attempting to change a DBLINK in XYZADM, it appeared as if I was changing (well, dropping and recreating) a link in XYZADM, but in reality I was doing this as SYSTEM in the SYSTEM schema. And TOAD, an outstandingly great product, was doing nothing to alert me to this error.

Another issue is that as SYSDBA, I can look at DBLINKS in a schema, then click the pencil icon to “change” that dblink. TOAD merrily does its thing, not telling me that I am editing the SYSDBA link instead of the schema link. Having the correct connection account in the session tab would help tremendously. Even better, a warning that I am viewing a schema DBLINK and will be changing a SYSTEM DBLINK. As it is, I waste time trying to figure out what has gone wrong, until I figure out “Brian, you dummy, you are doing this as SYSTEM rather than XYZADM!”

Please, no lectures on separation of duties and logging in as SYSDBA. We only do this sort of thing on our development databases.

Nah, no lectures from me. You did say that you didn’t mean to be logged in as sysdba. :slight_smile:

I’ll take a look at this tomorrow.

Monday’s beta will say “User@Database as SYSDBA” in the window titles and connection bar buttons if connected as SYSDBA but logged in as a user other than SYS. I figure it’s a given with SYS and not necessary to add it in that case.

Thanks :smile:. That will be a tremendous help.