An undocumented (well, up until the help file for Toad 10.6 anyway emotion-1) way to trace the amount of time various startup routines take is to edit your TOAD.INI file and add some or more of the following lines to the [SETTINGS] section:

Debug=1
LogActivities=1
ScriptDebug=1
VCPDebug=1
ToadFree=1

What they all do? The following should help:

  • Debug – Enables debugging in Toad. This creates the standard ToadDebug.txt file in the [User Files] folder.
  • LogActivities – Creates a ToadActivities.log file in the [User Files] folder. This was originally added for internal debugging of certain threaded activities, such as Beta updates, Toad Tip downloads, and Toad Feedback. This creates a ToadActivities.log file in the [User Files] folder. Since these processes are being run in threaded environments, keeping a separate log file helps to reduce the number of synchronization calls inside the thread.
  • ScriptDebug – Creates debugging scripts in Toad (ToadScriptDebug.txt) and Toad Script Runner (TSRDebug.txt). This is used for debugging scripts within Toad and within TSR. This creates a ToadScriptDebug.txt file from within Toad, or a TSRDebug.txt file from within TSR.
  • VCPDebug – Creates a log of debugging version control calls (VCPDebug.log) in the [User Files] folder. This may return a very large amount of information and decrease Toad’s performance.
  • ToadFree – This is used internally to make the commercial version of Toad behave like the freeware version of Toad; however, this is not something that would be useful to anyone but the developer guys at Quest, so best avoid setting this option. emotion-2-1.

After starting Toad there will be a new item under the Help menu: "Show Toad Debug Output" which will open a window showing the amount of time spent in various startup routines.

About the Author

Steve Hilker

Steve Hilker was a Product Manager for Quest Software. Steve has over 35 years technical experience spanning application development, system administration, database management and various management positions at several software companies. Steve was the founder of RevealNet, best known for its desktop knowledge bases and unique database tools such as PL/Formatter. RevealNet was acquired by Quest Software in 2001. He's had the pleasure of being the product manager for many of Quest's database tools.

Start the discussion at forums.toadworld.com