I despise TOAD. It's got so much bloat. It's loaded on my desktop at work and I never use it. I think SQL*Developer is neat, free, and does what I need it to. Far less bloat than TOAD. I used PL/SQL*Developer in one job and it was OK. I often find myself opening stuff up in NotePad++ or UltraEdit (my favorite text editor) and compiling in SQL*Plus. I tend to only use an IDE when things get really complicated, like I need to use a debugger. Most of the time I'm as productive in a plain text editor. I probably wouldn't recommend that approach to a newbie though. At the end of the day, you will probably prefer what you use the most, or what you are forced to use by your corporate policy. :) Cheers Tim... -- //www.freelists.org/webpage/oracle-l