TOAD Pocket Reference for Oracle – 2nd Edition Review
ISBN: 0596009712
Pages: 122
Publisher: O’Reilly
Topic: Oracle
Rating: 
– (3 out of 5)
This is the second edition of the TOAD pocket reference book for Oracle which was written based on TOAD v8 and v8.5. Toad seems to have been around a while now, actually I cannot remember a time without it, or how I managed without the program, I must have used SQL*Plus and Notepad for everything.
TOAD is a Graphical User Interface which makes using the Oracle database a lot easier in all respects. This quick reference guide is designed to help Oracle programmers get the most out of TOAD and it’s aimed at beginners and experienced users alike.
The reference covers all the main areas of TOAD including the SQL editor, procedure editor, sql modeller, schema browser, project manager and debugger. The second edition also covers the newer features including CodeXpert and Script Debugger.
The TOAD pocket reference works through all the TOAD menus explaining about each function as well as detailing the shortcut keys that are available that you may not know about.
The pocket reference contains over 120 pages and covers all the main areas of TOAD, I did find that the reference may have benefited from a few more screen shots for people to find there way around the program as TOAD v8.5 is now a very large program.
The freeware version of TOAD has now been updated since 8.5, so you get all the look and feel of the full version but only the functionality of the cut down version. This means that the pocket reference is also useful for people who only use the freeware version of TOAD as the pocket reference covers the areas of functionality of TOAD that are in the freeware version.
The pocket reference explains to programmers what functionality is available in the full version of TOAD which may make you want to upgrade from the freeware version to the full version.
All in all a good book in the pocket reference range, more useful for users on the latest TOAD versions, although it does include topics that relate to all versions of TOAD. I would say the TOAD Pocket Reference book is better for a beginner than an experienced user, unless you have just upgraded TOAD and you want to learn about the latest functionality.