We’ve all been there – you’ve managed to write a query that takes longer than a few seconds to execute. Tuning aside, sometimes it takes longer than you want for a query to run.

So what’s a SQL Developer user to do?

I say, keep going! While you’re waiting for your query to finish, there’s no reason why you can’t continue on with your work. If you need to execute something else in a worksheet, there’s no reason to launch a 2nd or 3rd copy of SQL Developer. Just open an un-shared worksheet.

Now while you’ve got 1 or more queries running, you can easily get yourself into a situation where you’re not sure what’s running where. Or maybe you want to cancel a query or just check how long something’s been running.

Just open the Task Progress Panel

If a query or task in SQL Developer takes more than 3-5 seconds, it will appear in the Task Progress panel. You can then watch the throbbers go back and forth while you sip your coffee/soda/Red Bull.

Run a query, spawn a new worksheet, run another query, watch them in the Task Progress panel.

Kudos and thanks to @leight0nn for helping me get the title of this post right

If you’re looking for help in managing and monitoring sessions in general, check out this post.