Introduction to Oracle SQL Developer

- [Instructor] Oracle SQL Developer is an integrated development environment that allows you to work with the SQL language in your Oracle database. It actually allows for much more, but that's what we'll be using it for during this course. SQL Developer is provided for free from Oracle, and it uses Java, so in case you want to download SQL Developer and install it on your computer or laptop, make sure you have the Java Runtime Environment properly set up before doing so.

If you are using the Oracle Developer virtual machine, which I'll be using for the exercises and demos in this course, then you're in luck because Oracle SQL Developer is already installed. You can find an icon for opening Oracle SQL Developer on your desktop. So double click on this icon to launch Oracle SQL Developer. Note that Oracle SQL Developer is a SQL client. You can download it and install it on any machine, and assuming that you have network connectivity to your database, you can use it to execute your queries.

There are multiple other SQL clients that allows you to run queries in your Oracle database, but SQL Developer is the most commonly used one, as it provides a big set of features and a very easy-to-use UI. As you can see, we now have SQL Developer open. In our next video, you will see how you can configure a connection from Oracle SQL Developer to your Oracle database. And of course, throughout this course, use Oracle SQL Developer to write and execute your queries.