SQL Developer is a great tool and it gets better with every version, well in version 4 I noticed that you can filter out what is displayed in the tree underneath a database when you have successfully connected. If you don't exactly know what I mean, this would probably be a familiar sight...

Once you're connected you get folders for tables, views, sequences, packages, types, synonyms, java, and on and on...


There is a way to reduce this list, because lets face it, most of the time you really would not care for the majority of this information. In my case I was able to reduce the list down to this...

Just tables and packages! I could not find a way of filtering out Other Users, but that's ok.




So how do you do this? Go to the SQL Developer Preferences, then Database and finally to Navigation Filter. Select/Deselect whatever you want visible and click OK. This takes effect immediately even if you already have an open database connection


It's a very useful feature and I recommend everyone to start using it.

-i