I came across Duncan Davies‘s PeopleSoft Tipster blog when searching for ways to customize and optimize SQL Developer to make my job easier. He has some great tips for tweaking Oracle’s free SQL Developer tool to look better and work better for the consultants of the world. Some tips that I’ve started using:

1) Change the Font. Developers like to indent and line up their code to make it more readable. Why deliver the product with a default font that isn’t fixed width, therefore making this harder? The first change I make is to swap the font (Tools > Preferences > Code Editor > Fonts) for Lucida Console, 11pts – although the font size may vary depending upon monitor resolution and the state of your eyesight.

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3) Syntax Colours. Picking a better colour scheme eases readability as you’ll be able to pick out strings, operators and brackets/braces quicker but the delivered scheme highlights keywords in bold, which throws out the alignment if you’ve pick a fixed-width font. I normally make the following changes (Tools > Preferences > Code Editor > Syntax Colours):

• Remove the bold highlight from ‘Default Element Name’ and ‘Default Keyword’.
• Change Default Separator to purple
• Change Default String to red
• Uncheck ‘Enable highlight’ against Current SQL

I also use several of the Toolbar Shortcuts he mentions, such as F9 to execute SQL queries.

Thanks for the great article, Duncan!