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<HTML>
<HEAD>
<TITLE>History of TOra</TITLE>
</HEAD>
<BODY>
<H1>History of TOra</H1>
I started the TOra project in December 2000, the reason being that
I had been increasingly jealous of the tools available for
interacting with Oracle databases to my colleges using windows. The
tools that were available for Linux users were not nearly powerful
enough. Execution plans being pretty much the most advanced feature
available. During this time I also made a lot of attempts to get
VMWare to work without any success fortunately. If I could have made
this to work I would never have started TOra but run a VMWare client
with Windows.
<P>
I started by working on what is now the worksheet in TOra.
Already in the beginning I envisaged TOra being plugin based and
easily extendable with new functionality without any or much change
of the existing code base, the <A HREF=api/toTool.html>toTool class</A>
being one of the first written gives this functionality.
<P>
In the beginning the development pace was really fast as always and it
didn't take long before it had at least in my opinion surpassed any
available tool for Linux as an SQL worksheet. Most of the development
of these versions were made in airports in Asia since I spent about a
week in those on a backpacking holiday there around new years 2000 to
2001. Yes, I know there aren't many other people who would bring a
laptop on a backpacking vacation, but I knew I would be spending a
lot of time in airports and what better way to waste the time.
<P>
By the time I was back I released the first version of TOra with
both worksheet and database browser. By this time I started looking
at the PL/SQL debugging package available in Oracle, this was the
first time I looked at developing functionality in TOra that I didn't
really feel a pressing need for myself since I rarely write any large
PL/SQL code. This was released in version 0.4 at the end of January,
still only about 1 month after the project was started. This was the
first functionality in TOra that is not available from any other open
source project.
<P>
The next big thing to happen to this project was that TrollTech
released the first version of Qt Free for windows at which point I
started glancing at making TOra available for the windows platform.
I've made a few feeble attempts earlier using an evaluation copy of
Qt/Windows without much success. But when this release was made I
really sat down and went through it finding lots of problems mainly
with regards to Visual C++ (Which is really crap, but the one you
have to use if you want to use Qt Free. Of course no tool can really
replace emacs, gcc, make and gdb if you know how to use them).
<P>
After this development slowed down considerably to be able to stabilize
the program to get the first stable releasse which was released on
the first of september 2001. At almost the same time as 1.0 was released
the first development release for 1.1 was released featuring a few of
the most asked for features including improved tuning and better
busy feedback. Most parts of TOra have been touched in some way for
this release. The 1.2 release was also the first commercial release
which is a way for me to ensure that TOra can be supported well forward
in the future as it is starting to consume more and more of my time.
<P>
<H1>The future</H1>
I will continue to develop TOra to be the best possible database development
and administration tool for Oracle and in the long run probably other
databases as well.<P>
By the time of the 1.2 release development of the 1.4 release is already
well under way and will mostly feature DBA improvements. The database
browser which will start getting more and more functionality to modify
the browsed objects. Other changes are made to make DBA:s administrating
database which people are accessing using TOra should also be happy with
this release since it will warn more often when you are doing things you
probably shouldn't be doing (Like running a server tuning session just to
get a handle of whats happening). Improved database tuning with a new wait
event analysis tool is also already finnished and ready for beta testing.
Also PostgreSQL support will probably be available for the 1.4 release.
<DIV ALIGN=right>
Henrik "Mauritz" Johnson<BR>
GlobeCom AB
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