In a product announcement bid aimed at improving Oracle Database developer productivity, the company has this week announced the availability of Oracle SQL Developer 3.0. This graphical tool for database development has been augmented with new migration functionalities designed to appeal to development and database administrator (DBA) tasks. It also introduces support for Oracle Data Mining and Oracle Spatial -- a tool to manage all geospatial data including vector and raster data, topology, and network models.

The company says that for developers looking to access the Oracle TimesTen In-Memory Database, Oracle SQL Developer 3.0 delivers enhancements over the previous version by providing a convenient interface for some basic administration tasks like statistics updates, adding and removing users, and manipulating cache groups, among other features.

The new Oracle Data Miner extension for Oracle SQL Developer 3.0 is a workflow-based graphical user interface for data mining that enables data analysts to build and evaluate multiple data mining models, apply models to new data, and enable predictive insights across the enterprise.

"Leveraging the popularity of Oracle SQL Developer, we are releasing our new Oracle Data Miner 11g Release 2," said Cetin Ozbutun, VP of data warehousing at Oracle. "With Oracle Data Mining, the data, models, and predictive analytics never leave the database enabling significantly more functionality, security, performance, and scalability at a lower total cost of ownership. In addition, when used with Oracle Exadata, data mining models built with Oracle Data Miner are pushed to storage for execution, providing even better scalability."

Oracle SQL Developer 3.0's new features include:

• Database Navigator -- offers DBAs and developers a simple entry point to browse and update a database, including configuration and storage files, security for profiles, roles, and users.
• SQL Tuning Advisor -- this code advisor analyzes high-volume SQL statements and offers tuning recommendations to developers writing queries.
• Explain Plan Diff -- enables developers to run and compare queries and review Explain Plans side-by-side.
• Query Builder -- offers developers a simple-to-use drag and drop interface for building queries.

Oracle SQL Developer is supported through My Oracle Support with any Oracle Database license and runs on Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X.