I have a few questions about toad. My team just moved over to toad from sql server and at first, I was hesitant to embrace the change. After a few weeks of playing around in it, I have to say I’m really impressed with everything from the export feature to the automation. We started using toad central intelligence and I find setting up complex jobs extremely easy. How many of you use toad for basic to complex ETL jobs? I started to move stuff off of SSIS and into toad automation.
You are going to love Toad. I changed jobs and went the other way (SQL server shop here). They bought me my own copy of Toad! No 32/64 bit problems when using Excel in ETL automation, no wide string to string conversion issues (as in no need to use a conversion step), multiple result tabs, drag and drop query builder, reverse create query builder from sql code, better help/prompting writing code in editor, easier to use variables, etc., etc. FTP in automation could be better but I prefer to use a run program step in Toad and call WinSCP anyhow passing command line arguments including Toad variables. I have built daily a ETL pulling lab results from an FTP site, decrypting it, loading it to a staging table, updating the data warehouse, create extract feeds to 3rd party vendors based on that data and send email messages upon completion at certain steps and error emails to myself if something goes wrong. I has a loop to process one or more lab files as they sometimes skip a day and then send two the next day (no problem). I don’t know what you can’t do with this tool. You can even have jobs that call jobs. The more you find out about it the more you will like it. Great support team too. I highly recomend watching Debbie’s video series on Automation. She keeps adding to them so there are a whole bunch now, the early ones are basic and the later ones get more advanced.
Thanks, my team is not embracing the move from sql server, but I’m starting to love toad. We have no set up the central intelligence yet, but i’m running jobs locally on my machine which is not good, but we’re setting that up soon. I’m hoping to move a lot of stuff off SSIS and just use the toad automation through central intelligence. I’m not sure if it is as robust as SSIS, but its still an awesome product.