Oracle SQL Developer

Oracle SQL Developer is an Integrated development environment (IDE) for working with SQL in Oracle databases. Oracle Corporation provides this product free; it uses the Java Development Kit.

Oracle SQL Developer
Developer	Oracle Corporation
Initial release	2005; 20 years ago (2005)[1]
Stable release	24.3.1.347.1826 (December 16, 2024; 10 months ago (2024-12-16)[2]) [±]
Written in	Java
Platform	Java SE
Type	SQL Integrated development environment
License	Proprietary[3]
Website	www.oracle.com/technetwork/developer-tools/sql-developer/

History

The SQL Developer product was initially created in response to a large invoice sent from Quest Software to Oracle Corporation over the use of Quest's TOAD product within Oracle's consulting group - Quest claimed that Oracle used the tool far more extensively than their license allowed for.

Larry Ellison personally called the lead developer during lunch early in 2006, stating that the payment just made to Quest in response to this (per Oracle's view) unwarranted license charge would be the last time Oracle paid the company for TOAD, and the developer was instructed to build a product that could replace it.^[4]

The initial release of SQL Developer was quickly put together, and released to Oracle internally immediately.

Features

Oracle SQL Developer supports Oracle products. In the past a variety of third-party plugins were supported which users were able to deploy to connect to non-Oracle databases. Oracle SQL Developer worked with IBM Db2, Microsoft Access, Microsoft SQL Server, MySQL, Sybase Adaptive Server, Amazon Redshift and Teradata databases.^[5]

Oracle SQL Developer supports automatic tabs, code insight, bracket matching and syntax coloring for PL/SQL.

Future versions of Oracle SQL Developer will use Visual Studio Code.^[1]

Components

Oracle SQL Developer product components include the OWA (Oracle Web Agent or MOD_PLSQL), an extension module for the Apache web server, and helps in setting up dynamic web-pages from PL/SQL within Oracle SQL Developer.^[6]

Extensions

In addition to the extensions provided by Oracle, third parties have written extensions to add new features to SQL Developer and to integrate with other products:^[7]

Integration with other Oracle products

• SQL Developer Data Modeler operates with and models metadata.^[8] Prior to SQL Developer version 3, it constituted a separate (but integrated) free^[9] counterpart of SQL Developer. As of SQL Developer version 3 modeling became an integrated part of the overall tool. "Data Modeler" can produce (among other outputs) .dmd files.^[10]
• Data Miner^[11]

History

Oracle SQL Developer versions^[12]

Version	Release date	Description
Releases prior to 1.0		Prior to version 1.0, Oracle Corporation labeled the product "Raptor"
1.0	March 2006	The first release
1.1	December 2006
1.2.1	August 2007
1.5	April 2008
1.5.1	June 2008
1.5.3	December 2008
1.5.4	March 2009
1.5.5	July 2009
2.1 RC1	December 2009
2.1 Patch 1	March 2010
3.0	March 2011
3.1	February 2012
3.2	August 2012	APEX listener administration; UI enhancements; 12c database support; bug fixes[13]
4.0	December 2013
4.0.1	February 2014
4.0.2	May 2014
4.0.3	September 2014
4.1.1	June 2015
4.1.2	October 2015	Requires Java 8
4.1.3	December 2015
4.1.5	September 2016[14]
4.2.0	April 2017[15]
17.2	July 2017[16]	New version numbering system with year.quarter used.[16]
17.4	Dec 2017[17]
18.1	April 2018[18]
18.2	July 2018[19]
18.3	October 2018[20]
18.4	January 2019[21]
19.1	April 2019[22]
19.2	August 2019[23]
19.4	December 2019[24]
20.2	June 2020[25]
20.4	January 2021[26]
20.4.1	February 2021[27]
21.2	August 2021[28]
21.4	December 2021[29]
21.4.2	January 2022[30]
22.2	June 2022[31]	Requires Oracle Java 11
22.2.1	September 2022[32]
23.1	April 2023[33]
24.3	October 2024[34]	Requires Oracle Java 17
24.3.1	December 2024[35]

See also

• JDeveloper
• Oracle Developer Suite