In the field of

software Software is a set of computer programs and associated documentation and data. This is in contrast to hardware, from which the system is built and which actually performs the work. At the lowest programming level, executable code consists ...

, SQL programming tools provide platforms for database administrators (DBAs) and

application Application may refer to: Mathematics and computing * Application software, computer software designed to help the user to perform specific tasks ** Application layer, an abstraction layer that specifies protocols and interface methods used in a c ...

developers to perform daily tasks efficiently and accurately. Database administrators and application developers often face constantly changing environments which they rarely completely control. Many changes result from new development projects or from modifications to existing code, which, when deployed to production, do not always produce the expected result. For organizations to better manage development projects and the

team A team is a group of individuals (human or non-human) working together to achieve their goal. As defined by Professor Leigh Thompson (academic), Leigh Thompson of the Kellogg School of Management, " team is a group of people who are interde ...

s that develop code, suppliers of SQL programming tools normally provide more than facility to the database administrator or application developer to aid in database management and in quality code-deployment practices.

Features

SQL programming tools may include the following features:

SQL editing

SQL editors allow users to edit and execute SQL statements. They may support the following features: * cut, copy, paste, undo, redo, find (and replace), bookmarks * block indent, print, save file, uppercase/lowercase * keyword highlighting * auto-completion * access to frequently used files * output of query result * editing query-results * committing and rolling-back transactions * inside cut paper

Object browsing

Tools may display information about

database object In computing, a database is an organized collection of data stored and accessed electronically. Small databases can be stored on a file system, while large databases are hosted on computer clusters or cloud storage. The design of databases span ...

s relevant to developers or to database administrators. Users may: * view object descriptions * view object

definition A definition is a statement of the meaning of a term (a word, phrase, or other set of symbols). Definitions can be classified into two large categories: intensional definitions (which try to give the sense of a term), and extensional definitio ...

s (DDL) * create database objects * enable and disable

trigger Trigger may refer to: Notable animals and people ;Mononym * Trigger (horse), owned by cowboy star Roy Rogers ;Nickname * Trigger Alpert (1916–2013), American jazz bassist * "Trigger Mike" Coppola (1900–1966), American gangster ;Surname * Bru ...

s and constraints * recompile valid or invalid objects * query or edit

table Table may refer to: * Table (furniture), a piece of furniture with a flat surface and one or more legs * Table (landform), a flat area of land * Table (information), a data arrangement with rows and columns * Table (database), how the table data ...

s and

view A view is a sight or prospect or the ability to see or be seen from a particular place. View, views or Views may also refer to: Common meanings * View (Buddhism), a charged interpretation of experience which intensely shapes and affects thou ...

s Some tools also provide features to display dependencies among objects, and allow users to expand these dependent objects recursively (for example: packages may reference views, views generally reference tables, super/subtypes, and so on).

Session browsing

Database administrators and application developers can use session browsing tools to view the current activities of each user in the database. They can check the resource-usage of individual users, statistics information, locked objects and the current running SQL of each individual session.

User-security management

DBAs can create, edit, delete, disable or enable user-accounts in the database using security-management tools. DBAs can also assign roles, system privileges, object privileges, and

storage Storage may refer to: Goods Containers * Dry cask storage, for storing high-level radioactive waste * Food storage * Intermodal container, cargo shipping * Storage tank Facilities * Garage (residential), a storage space normally used to store car ...

-quotas to users.

Debugging

Some tools offer features for the debugging of

stored procedure A stored procedure (also termed proc, storp, sproc, StoPro, StoredProc, StoreProc, sp, or SP) is a subroutine available to applications that access a relational database management system (RDBMS). Such procedures are stored in the database data dic ...

s: Step In, Step Over, Step Out, Run Until Exception, Breakpoints, View & Set Variables, View Call Stack, and so on. Users can debug any program-unit without making any modification to it, including triggers and

object type In computer science, boxing (a.k.a. wrapping) is the transformation of placing a primitive type within an object so that the value can be used as a reference. Unboxing is the reverse transformation of extracting the primitive value from its wrap ...

Performance monitoring

Monitoring tools may show the database resources — usage summary, service time summary, recent activities, top sessions, session history or top SQL — in easy-to-read graphs. Database administrators can easily monitor the health of various components in the monitoring instance. Application developers may also make use of such tools to diagnose and correct application-performance problems as well as improve SQL server performance.

Test Data

Test data generation tools can populate the database by realistic test data for server or client side testing purposes. Also, this kind of software can upload sample BLOB files to database.