CSCI N311

Connecting to your Oracle Database throughthe Oracle SQL Developer

  1. Download the Oracle SQL Developer available through iuware.iu.edu (

This is a database client tool that allows you to interact with the database engine through a graphic user interface.

  1. An account has been created for you to access the Oracle database engine that has been installed and configured on the server.
  2. Connect the client to the database engine.

In the SQL developer folder (extracted from the zip file you downloaded), double click on sqldeveloper.exe to launch the SQL Developer. Click on New -> Database Connection. Configure the connection according to the following.

  1. Your Oracle user name is the IUPUI username. Your Oracle password is in the format of

F9999LLL

where F is the first character of your first name, 9999 is the last 4 digits of your student id, LLL is the first 3 characters of your last name.

  1. Save your connection so that next time when you launch, you don’t need to create the connection again.

You may need to establish a VPN connection to the IU network if you want to connect to the Oracle server from off-campus locations.

  1. After you establish the connect, trial run several SQL queries
  2. Right click on “Oracle Server” -> Open SQL Worksheet, type the query into the worksheet window, then click on the green triangles to run the queries . “Run Statement” button will run a selected query. “Run Script”button will run all the statements on the worksheet.
  3. Query 1: show user;

This will show the current user.

  1. Query 2:select owner, table_name from all_tables;
    This will show you a list of all tables (and their owners) available to you to query from.
  2. Now pick one of the tables, any table, from the preceding step and write a SELECT statement using that table in the FROM clause using the format OWNER.TABLE_NAME. For the sake of simplicity just select all columns for now. For example:
    select * from sys.audit_actions;
    Hopefully you didn’t pick a table with many rows, as you’ll now see all the data in its entirety now.
  3. Now add a WHERE clause to that SELECT statement in the preceding step. Write this WHERE clause such that it will limit the number of rows you get to only one or a few rows instead of the whole table. For example:
    select * from sys.audit_actions where name like 'DROP%';
  4. Write your queries to a file using the save command. The default file extension will be .sql.
  5. Run the scripts in the practiceTables.sql to create sample tables.
  1. You can also install on your own machine a local copy of the Oracle Database 11g Express Edition, available for download free of charge from

Please follow the instructions from the Oracle website about connecting the client to your database engine on the local machine.