Oracle and Open Source

ViennaSQL

ViennaSQL is another superb open source Java GUI tool that provides numerous Oracle SQL data drill-downs into the database. It is useful for both developers and DBAs. ViennaSQL comes with a GNU license, excellent functionality, and the very latest Java look-and-feel.

The following are the main web sites for ViennaSQL:

http://sourceforge.net/projects/vienna/

The development project web site

http://vienna.sourceforge.net

ViennaSQL’s general web site

Early in 1999, Mike Wilson was working on a large project with Oracle on the back end, and he needed a GUI query tool to overcome the limitations of the character-based SQL*Plus. He originally wrote a server-based tool in Tcl/Tk, but this X-based tool wasn’t up to doing the job over slow international connections—hence the need for a local client that could work on various operating systems. In order to both brush up on his Java skills and get the tool he needed—and in the tradition of many other open source developers—Mike decided that necessity was the mother of invention. He started building his tool in July 2000, with plenty of helpful advice from Andrei Lenki.

By September of 2000, an early version of the GUI query tool was available. It was originally known as vsql (Visual SQL), but because an earlier tool had the same name, Mike renamed the program ViennaSQL both to keep the “V” and to follow a personal tradition of naming server hosts after famous cities. (The famous 1980s song by Ultravox had absolutely nothing to do ...