Installing SQL Developer on Ubuntu

Today it is not necessary to introduce SQL Developer, Oracle’s main tool to work with databases.

I’ve started to use SQL Developer from the beginning (2015, project Raptor, later renamed into SQL Developer).

Before that, the only Oracle tool for working with it’s flagship database was SQL*Plus (and iSQL*Plus later).

For that reason, most of the Oracle developers and DBA’a have been using TOAD.

Over the years, Oracle has added a lot of exciting functionality into SQL Developer.

Today SQL Developer became a very capable tool which is still free.

I already wrote about SQL Developer in the past.

Please check the following link where I’ve described some of performance related features added into SQL Developer.

https://www.josip-pojatina.com/en/sql-developer-4-1-new-performance-related-features/

Installation of SQL Developer is quite trivial task, even on Ubuntu which is not supported as target OS.

As prerequisite you need to have JDK 8 installed prior to launch installer, and to download Other Platforms zip file: sqldeveloper-18.4.0-376.1900-no-jre.zip

After that you only need to unzip downloaded file into some location like /home/user directory:

user@user-Ubuntu1804LTS:~>  unzip sqldeveloper-18.4.0-376.1900-no-jre.zip

user@user-Ubuntu1804LTS:~>  cd  sqldeveloper

user@user-Ubuntu1804LTS:~/sqldeveloper> chmod +x sqldeveloper.sh
user@user-Ubuntu1804LTS:~/sqldeveloper> vim sqldeveloper.sh

then comment the following line:

#cd "`dirname $0`"/sqldeveloper/bin && bash sqldeveloper $*

and add these lines from below:

unset -v GNOME_DESKTOP_SESSION_ID
cd /home/user/sqldeveloper/bin && bash sqldeveloper $*

If you want to run SQL Developer from any location when you are in terminal, you need to create link like in the following example (as root from /usr/local/bin directory):

root@user-Ubuntu1804LTS:/usr/local/bin>ln -s /home/user/sqldeveloper/sqldeveloper.sh sqldeveloper

To launch SQL Developer from GUI, first you need to execute the following command from the /usr/share/applications directory:

root@user-Ubuntu1804LTS:/usr/share/applications>touch sqldeveloper.desktop

and add the following:

root@user-Ubuntu1804LTS:/usr/share/applications>vim sqldeveloper.desktop

[Desktop Entry]
Exec=sqldeveloper
Terminal=false
StartupNotify=true
Categories=GNOME;Oracle;
Type=Application
Icon=/home/user/sqldeveloper/icon.png
Name=Oracle SQL Developer

#to update desktop database and see the desktop entry
sudo update-desktop-database

Finally try to connect to running Oracle database to confirm that everything is working as expected.

Summary:

Main reason why I dedicate this article to SQL Developer is because Ubuntu installation is a bit different comparing with Red Hat / Oracle Linux / CentOS / Fedora installation, which is described on Oracle Website.

Other reason is because I want to create reference Oracle developer environment which is based on Ubuntu (for many reasons that will be more clear in the future blogs), instead of Oracle Linux.

Although GUI of SQL Developer seems to be inferior comparing it with TOAD for example, if you give it a try, you’ll probably change your mind.

From unit test, creating REST ful web API, Data Mining, Db browser, debugging, monitoring, ssh tunneling, connecting to any jdbc database (Oracle, MySQL, TimesTen, PostgreSQL…), list of SQL Developer functionality is really extensive.

Some of these functionality will be described in the article that follows.

---