Oracle sqldeveloper - how to connect DB from command line

Question

I am writing a small DB utility. I would like to give the user the ability to open an instance of Oracle sqldeveloper directly from this utility. Is it possible to open Oracle sqldeveloper IDE that already connected to a specific DB?

Something like sqldeveloper USERID/PASSWORD@DATABASE

Answer 1

Luckily, yes. This is now possible using Oracle's ConnectionHelper extension.

It's a bit of hacky workflow, though. Hopefully they'll figure out a way to include in SQLDeveloper itself, because if management learns about adding a 'githubusercontent' repo they might misjudge the risks.

Also, be sure you make use of a pretty recent SQLDeveloper (20.2+).

But here goes:

1. In SQLDeveloper, add the following update source, by going to Help -> Check for Updates and hitting 'Add': https://raw.githubusercontent.com/bjeffrie/sqldev-update-center/master/update-center.xml
2. Select 'Connection Helper' and next-next-finish the wizard (you'll need to restart SQLDeveloper).
3. Go to Tools -> Preferences and in the left pane, click the node 'Connection Helper', then in the main pane enable 'Accept command line connections'. You don't need any of the other check boxes for what you're asking.
4. Close SQLDeveloper and start it from CLI: sqldeveloper -myCLIconnection=user/pw@host:port/service

[This is a combination of what's documented by Oracle's thatjeffsmith on his blog and what Oracle's Brian Jeffries put in Oracle's github repo.]

Answer 2

This is now possible with a free, open-source extension as long as you're using version 20.2 or higher of SQL Developer.

I have step-by-step instructions here

A quick GIF of it working...