Released this week, version 11 of Quest's Toad for Oracle continues to vie for headspace within the Oracle database tools marketplace. Purporting to offer new enhancements focused on reducing operational and development risk for the 2 million-plus database pros devoted to the Oracle mantra, this latest leap for Toad offers what the company details as more "flexible and intuitive" ways to perform code reviews and analysis.

Quest is at pains to fully justify the additional analytical prowess of its latest release; the company highlights the additional accountability pressures that now filter down to the individual developer, administrator, and analyst, who often have to do the work of two or three people. "In the database world, a big data and cloud revolution is changing the way database professionals develop, access, manage, and analyze data," said the company, in a press statement.

Toad for Oracle 11's new code-analysis feature allows the user to decide how they want to apply code review rules according to severity level, objective, code element, and rule attributes. The Code Analysis dashboard also attempts to provide team leaders and managers with deeper visibility so they can assess the status of code quality.

"Toad for Oracle 11 gives users the power to simplify and automate the way they work and the processes they follow, reducing unplanned development cycles and their associated frustration. Toad's enhanced workflow allows them to move quickly from one task to the next, and gives them deeper and broader visibility into the database. This simplification and automation of complex database development and administration makes users much more productive, and ensures that the database performs at maximum efficiency, as well. No other tool on the market covers all these bases," said Claudia Fernandez of Quest Software.

The new Toad for Oracle product literature suggests that this new offering will help DBAs to become more proactive by automating frequent database management tasks, ensuring optimal performance, and mitigating the risk of changes. A "Database Health Check" feature is now enhanced to give DBAs a high level of visibility into the status of all managed databases, including virtual databases and the way Oracle Enterprise Edition management packs and options are being used. In addition, all of this can be executed against multiple databases.