Previous: template, Up: tools

### 4.19 SQL Editor

When TOra needs to run an SQL statement it will not actually use the SQL needed directly. It will fetch an SQL statement by addressing it with a string. The string is built up by a module name, followed by a colon and a unique name for the SQL (Example: toBrowser:ListIndex which will contain the SQL statement for getting all the indexes for a schema).

For each SQL name there may be a number of actual SQL strings that are available, each are associated with a version number. When TOra requests an SQL statement by a name it will receive the string with the statement with the highest version number lower than the version of Oracle for the current connection that will be used to run it. Each SQL name also has a description associated with it so you can understand what the SQL is supposed to do.

TOra has a default SQL name to statement map which can be redefined by the user to either add support for different versions than TOra originally supports, or change the default behavior for TOra in some cases. The changes from the default map is saved in the file defined in the options dialog (see Options). If you make changes to improve support for other versions of Oracle please send this file to tora-develop@lists.sourceforge.net and we will incorporate them in the future releases.

You start the SQL editor either by selecting Edit|Edit SQL or by selecting Edit SQL in the result list context editor. You are then presented with the following dialog.

The window is divided into several parts. To the left is a list of SQL statements available divided into modules. When an item is selected in this list you can use the right part of the screen to modify the SQL associated by the selected name.

The right part of the window is divided into the name and version at the top. The version is also preceded with the name of the provider (Usually Oracle) separated by a colon. Each statement name can have several versions of an SQL. You can add a new version by simply entering a new text into the version combobox. You can also select any of the existing versions by selecting them from the list.

Below the name and version is the description which is independent from the version. Below that is a worksheet (see SQL Worksheet) which you can use to edit and test the SQL statement that should be associated with the given name and version.

There is also a toolbar with the current available commands.

Open
  Read in a file containing SQL descriptions saved before.
Save
  Save the changes made from the default to the SQL statements to a file. This file can be used to send updates and improvements of the internal SQL to incorporate in future versions.
Save this entry
  Save the changes made. If changes have been made and you select a new item you will be asked to save or discard the changes if you forget to save entry before.
Drop this entry
  Drop the current entry. If the last version of a statement is deleted the entire statement will be deleted. Observe that you can not delete default statements permanently, they will reappear when you restart TOra so you can't really screw up with this.
New SQL
  Start new SQL statement definitions.