Saving your fingers

I'm all for anything that saves time and makes things simpler. My esteemed (ex) colleague Balazs ( you know you get the blame for everything now don't you....) put me on to this one. I'm a big fan of plsql developer from http://www.allroundautomations.com/ it's been around a number of years and is a fantastic tool for both developing plsql, but also working with data (and in particular object data). I prefer it over both sqldeveloper (even after all the recent improvements) and even Toad.......

So what is this time saving method?

Well it's quite simple really - you can create shortcuts for certain bits of sqltext - when you type the shortcut the text gets autoreplaced with what you defined the shortcut as.

For instance if i define an alias called 'echo' as below

echo = DBMS_OUTPUT.PUT_LINE()

Then as soon as a type echo it gets auto replaced with DBMS_OUTPUT.PUT_LINE (why did the plsql developers choose such a long name in the first place is beyond me)

This is configured in

Tools->preferences->user interface->editor->autoreplace

You then click the edit button and add you aliases

You are then ready to go.

It's also useful for autocorrecting the common mistypes SLECT/SELCT etc (you get the idea......)