gqlplus 1.12 review

gqlplus is a drop-in replacement for sqlplus, an Oracle SQL client, for UNIX and UNIX-like platforms. The difference between gqlpl

License: GPL (GNU General Public License) File size: 0K Developer: Ljubomir J. Buturovic

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gqlplus is a drop-in replacement for sqlplus, an Oracle SQL client, for UNIX and UNIX-like platforms.

The difference between gqlplus and sqlplus is command-line editing and history, plus table-name and column-name completion. As you know if you have used sqlplus, it is notoriously difficult to correct typing errors and other mistakes in your SQL statements.

sqlplus does give you ability to use external editor to edit a statement, but only the last statement you typed. gqlplus solves this problem by providing the familiar command-line editing and history as in tcsh or bash shells, and table/column-name completion, while otherwise retaining compatibility with sqlplus.

Thus, no user training is needed - simply use gqlplus instead of sqlplus. In addition, configuration/installation is trivial: gqlplus is a single binary compiled executable (written in C), so all you need to do is download it and put it anywhere in your PATH. After that, you'll be ready to use it.

There are a number of other sqlplus front-end programs which include this functionality. They, however, require some user training, and may not be as easy to install (requiring particular version of Perl, and/or particular set of Perl modules, and/or configuration files).

In contrast, the design goal of gqlplus was to remain as close as possible to sqlplus, with the addition of command-line editing and table and column name completion. The command-line editing will be familiar to UNIX users since it works as in command-line shells. Additionally, there are no installation issues since the program is a single binary executable.

What's New in This Release:
A SIGSEGV that occurred when using SQLPATH was fixed.
An ACCEPT command was implemented.
The DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH environment variable (the Mac OS X version of LD_LIBRARY_PATH) was added along with an NLS_DATE_FORMAT environment variable.
A -p command-line switch that displays a progress report and elapsed time information was added.
SIGTERM is now used to kill sqlplus.
ORACLE_PATH was added to the environment.