Frequently Asked QuestionsFrequently Asked Questions

Purchasing & Licensing

General

JDBC and Drivers

Installing & Running DbVisualizer

Database Specific

How to's

Purchasing & Licensing

The software end user license agreement (EULA) is available here.

Generation of license key(s) is a manual process performed by our office in Sweden (CET).
The software license certificate email including license key(s) is sent by email to the address provided by you within 48 hours after payment has been received (normally much faster).

Customers sometimes contact us or our partner cleverbridge that they haven't received the license certificate email after 48 hours. The most common reason for this is that the email server simply filter out the email since it have an attachment with a file name (extension) or content that is not allowed to pass through. If this happen just post a support request and specify the purchase Reference Number or Order Number. Either describe in the request what file extensions are allowed or specify an alternative email address that we can re-send the license to.

No, DbVisualizer is available as a download only.

There are no shipping costs or other hidden costs.

All prices listed are subject to the applicable sales tax/VAT, if any. The applicable taxes depend on the customer's country of residence.

Discounts are applied to single orders. Previous purchases are not considered.

The license certificate email includes information about your licensing terms and the license key file(s). If ordering a single license then the license key file will be attached to the license certificate email as dbvis.license. If the order includes several licenses then the attached file is named licenses.zipped.

From 2011-05-19 all DbVisualizer online sales is processed by our partner cleverbridge. All major credit cards are accepted as well as payment via bank transfer, check or in cash. The ordering phase is processed via encryption and safe secure transmission of all data you enter.

For inquiries regarding orders registered with cleverbridge, please check the cleverbridge contact information web page.

We are partnering with hundreds of resellers around the world. Check this list for details.

Until 2011-05-19 all online orders for DbVisualizer were processed by out partner "ShareIt! - Digital River GmbH".

If you have any inquiries regarding orders registered before 2011-05-18 then please contact Shareit either via Shareit Customer Care Center or by phone:

A licensed user can run DbVisualizer Pro on different computers and OS'es, even concurrently regardless of location as long as it is the licensed user using it.
Read more in the EULA.

You can run DbVisualizer Pro on different operating systems with the same license.
Read more in the EULA.

An evaluation license is designed for a 21-day trial of the software. You can only use the software for testing purposes during your trial.

A license can be renewed even if the license has expired a long time ago. There is no penalty or extra cost related to renewing expired licenses.

This number is listed as License id in the Help->License Key window in DbVisualizer. It is also listed in the Subject of the license certificate email. If you have lost this number then post a support request and we will mail it to you.

Your license is perpetual and never expire. You do however need an active license to use new feature versions released after the license upgrade expiration date.

If you want to use the latest version of DbVisualizer Pro and any of the following apply you need to renew your license:

• for DbVisualizer 3.x
• for DbVisualizer 4.x
• your annual "Upgrade Expiration" date has past (check Help->License Key in DbVisualizer for details) or the "Free Upgrades Until" date in your license certificate email

You may decide to stay with the version you are currently using. Installers for old versions are available in the download old versions page.

General

No, DbVisualizer is a proprietary software application.

Please post your enquiry for more information.

Yes. Contact yWorks for more information.

Of course! Make sure you link: http://www.dbvis.com

Note: From DbVisualizer 6.5 there is built-in support for migrating user settings. Check the File->Export/Import Settings feature.

Continue reading the following if you are using an older version than DbVisualizer 6.5.

All personal settings are saved in the .dbvis directory. The location of this directoy depends on what OS you are using.

UNIX/Linux:
   /home/<user>/.dbvis

Windows:
   C:\Documents and Settings\<user>\.dbvis\config

Mac OS X:
   /Users/<user>/.dbvis/config

(Change <user> to the correct userid)

To migrate from one machine to another then just zip the top level .dbvis directory on the original machine. On the target machine unzip the archived files in the location specific for that OS as listed above.

Support for Windows 7 was introduced in DbVisualizer 6.5.10.

Support for Java 7 was introduced in DbVisualizer 8.0 for Windows and Linux/UNIX. Older versions will not work properly with Java 7. Mac OS X is currently not supported with Java 7 due to issues in Java.

JDBC and Drivers

Java Database Connectivity, JDBC, is briefly an API (Application Programming Interface) which allows a standardized way to communicate with a database. JDBC out of the box is useless, it is mainly a collection of Java interfaces that describes various low level methods. To actually connect and start working with a database a JDBC driver implementation is needed. Many different JDBC drivers exists from a variety of vendors and a database specific driver must be installed to be able to setup a database session.

You'll need a JDBC driver that works with the actual database that you are about to connect to. Please read the Databases and JDBC Drivers page for more information. DbVisualizer works with any category (type) of JDBC driver even though it is easiest to use a type 4 driver (also called light weight driver).

Please visit the Connection Wizard section in the Load JDBC Driver and Get Connected document.

Installing & Running DbVisualizer

On Windows:
The installer produce a log in the users temp directory. This is typically C:\Documents and settings\<user>\Local Settings\Temp. The name of the file starts with i4jnlog.

This error is displayed when launching DbVisualizer 5.0 using an invalid license key file. The problem happen when using a license key file for an older version such as 3.x or 4.x.

Solution:

• Either renew your license for DbVisualizer Pro
• or register for an evaluation license for the latest version
• or make sure you are running a version of DbVisualizer that is compatible with the license you have.

DbVisualizer is normally launched using the provided executables that are created during the installation. The following is needed only when the recommended launch method is not suitable.

In the installation directory for DbVisualizer there are script files suitable for the OS you are using. These are dbvis.sh, dbvis.bat for the DbVisualizer GUI and dbviscmd.sh and dbviscmd.bat for the command line interface. Check these scripts how to launch DbVisualizer manually.

On Windows:

1. Open a DOS shell and change directory to the installation directory for DbVisualizer.
2. Execute set INSTALL4J_LOG=yes
3. Then launch the dbvis.exe
4. A log file will be created in the user temp directory. This is typically C:\Documents and settings\<user>\Local Settings\Temp. The name of the file starts with i4jnlog.

The "No suitable driver" status may appear in the Connection Message in the Connection tab:

No suitable driver.
There is no driver that can handle a connection for the
specified URL. The most common reason is that the driver
is not loaded in the Driver Manager.
Also make sure the URL is correct spelled.

This message indicates that there is no driver capable to setup the connection based on the specified Database URL. The reason is either that the required driver is not loaded or that the Database URL is syntactically incorrect.

Installing DbVisualizer on a memory stick is easy. Just do as follows:

1. Download one of the installers that are packaged as an archive (zip, gzip, etc). Don't use any of the GUI (setup) installers.
   
2. Follow the related installation instruction in the download web page and unpack the archive on the memory stick.

You're set.

DbVisualizer read and store user settings in a OS dependent directory. When running DbVisualizer on a memory stick this is probably not a good idea since your settings will be kept on the computer where the stick is currently plugged in. Do as follow to read the settings from the memory stick:

1. Navigate to the DbVisualizer installation directory on the memory stick.
2. Open the dbvis.vmoptions file in a text editor.
3. Add the following in the file:
      -Ddbvis.prefsdir=MySettings
4. All your settings will now be stored in the DBVIS-HOME\MySettings directory on the memory stick. (Optionally you may specify a full or relative path).

If you've been running DbVisualizer on a computer and want to copy all your settings to the memory stick then copy all files (including the .dbvis directory) to the location specified in the dbvis.vmoptions file. These are the standard locations for the DbVisualizer settings directory:

Windows
    C:\Documents and Settings\<user>\.dbvis

Linux/UNIX
    /home/<user>/.dbvis

Mac OS X
    /Users/<user>/.dbvis

(Change <user> to the correct userid)

The graph illustrates the relationships between tables in databases supporting referential integrity (also called primary and foreign key mappings). The graph displays no arcs between tables if the database do no support primary/foreign key mapping or if mappings has not been defined. Databases such as Oracle, Sybase, DB2 and Cloudscape normally supports referential integrity.

Procedures can not return any results while Functions must return results.

Extended visualization is supported only in DbVisualizer Pro. Check the feature matrix for exact information about what objects appear for the supported databases.

Note: The following is valid only for versions up to 5.0 of DbVisualizer. The general recommendation is to always use the most recent version.

Pressing "Stop" while a SQL statement is executing will only interrupt the execution if DbVisualizer have the current control of the execution. I.e if the database is currently executing the statement then DbVisualizer will wait to interrupt the processing until the database is finished executing the statement. The reason for this is that the JDBC "cancel" call might cause some JDBC drivers to make the application freeze or other strange errors.

Do the following to enable more detailed debug output from DbVisualizer:

For DbVisualizer 6.5 and newer:

1. Open Tools->Debug Window
2. Enable Debug DbVisualizer
3. Make sure Log Destination is set to Debug Window

For all versions older than DbVisualizer 6.5:

1. Open Tools->Tool Properties
2. Select the Debug category
3. Set Debug Level to Debug
4. Set Detail Level to Full
5. Press Ok in the Tool Properties window
6. Open the Tools->Debug Window

Once debug is enabled, perform the operation in DbVisualizer you want to see debug information for.

Yes.

Solution:

1. Open the DBVIS-HOME/resources/dbvis-custom.prefs file in a text editor. 
2. Locate the dbvis.disabledataedit property
3. Set its value to true. Remember to remove the "#" character first at the line. 
4. Save the file and then re-start DbVisualizer.

A bug in Java 1.6 running on Windows XP may result in several minutes until DbVisualizer finish loading.

The problem is most likely a side effect of having really large files on the desktop. Try temporarily move these from the desktop and re-launch DbVisualizer.

Read the full bug report: http://bugs.sun.com/bugdatabase/view_bug.do?bug_id=6372808

DbVisualizer does not in itself support cross database connection queries. Some databases, like Oracle, offer concepts like "database links" to make this possible and you can use those features in DbVisualizer. See the documentation for your database for details.

Another alternative is to use an H2 database as an intermediary. All you need to create an H2 database for this purpose is bundled with DbVisualizer.

H2 supports something called Linked Table. A Linked Table is a table in another database of any kind that you can connect to through JDBC. So to combine columns from a table in one database with columns from a table in another database, you create Linked Tables for each table in the H2 database and then run a SELECT statement joining the Linked Tables.

Here's an example involving two databases, here called DB_ONE and DB_TWO, each with a table like this:

CREATE TABLE test_link (
  id INT NOT NULL,
  val VARCHAR(20),
  PRIMARY KEY (id)
)

Follow these steps to set up an H2 database with the Linked Tables:

1. Open Tools->Driver Manager and select the H2 Embedded driver.
2. Add the JAR files for the database(s) you want to work with to the User Specified path. For instance if both DB_ONE and DB_TWO are MySQL databases, add the MySQL driver JAR file.
3. Create an H2 Embedded connection using the Connection Wizard, i.e. select H2 Embedded as the driver and enter a file name for the database (e.g. ~/mydb to create it in your home folder). Leave Userid and Password blank.
4. Connect to the H2 database and navigate to the Linked Tables node. Select it and choose Create Linked Table from the right-click menu.
5. Enter all information for the table in the DB_ONE database, e.g. "DB_ONE_TABLE" as the Local Table Name and "TEST_LINK" as the Remote Table Name. The other fields depend on the databases you want to work with. For MySQL, the JDBC Driver Class Name is "com.mysql.jdbc.Driver", and the JDBC URL "jdbc:mysql://server:port/database", where server, port and database are replaced with the appropriate values for your database.
6. Next, use the Create Linked Table dialog again to create a Linked Table for the table in the DB_TWO database, e.g. naming it "DB_TWO_TABLE".

SELECT id, val from DB_ONE_TABLE where id in (SELECT id from DB_TWO_TABLE)

You can also update one table with data from the other using an UPDATE statement like this:

UPDATE
  DB_TWO_TABLE r
SET
  val =
  (
     SELECT
         val
     FROM
         DB_ONE_TABLE
     WHERE
         id = r.id
  )

We suggest you experiment with this using test tables before you do it with your real tables to get a feel for how it works, and watch out for potential data format issues if you combine tables from different database types, such as an Oracle table with a MySQL table.

H2 is an open source product that you can learn more about at http://www.h2database.com. H2 is bundled with DbVisualizer since version 8.0.

Database Specific

Note: This applies only when using DbVisualizer Free or when the "generic" database profile is loaded in DbVisualizer Pro.

Stored procedures/functions in Oracle that belongs to a package are displayed several times in the database objects tree. According to our investigations is this related to the Oracle JDBC driver and the way it reports the procedures and functions.

Note: This applies only when using DbVisualizer Free or when the "generic" database profile is loaded in DbVisualizer Pro.

Selecting a stored procedure/function in the database objects tree for an Oracle database displays some of the columns multiple times. According to our investigations is this related to the Oracle JDBC driver and the way it reports the columns for procedures and functions.

This may happen if the the JDBC driver is not 2.0 compliant. Generally we recommend that the latest available JDBC driver from Oracle is used.

Note: This applies only when using DbVisualizer Free or when the "generic" database profile is loaded in DbVisualizer Pro.

Oracle has the ability to group a collection of procedures and functions into packages. The "xx" in the example above is the package name and "yy" is the actual procedure/function name.

The DDL feature requires a JDBC 3 compliant driver. Make sure you your are using the latest available JDBC driver from the Oracle web site.

Note: Oracle hints are supported from DbVisualizer 8.0. The following is applicable for older versions.

Block comments identified by /* ... */ are automatically removed by DbVisualizer when executing a statement in the SQL Commander. Since Oracle hints are identified by /*+ ... */ these are removed as well. To workaround this open Tool Properties and select the SQL Editor->Comments category. In Block Comment Begin Identifier add a trailing whitespace after "/*" so the result will be "/* ".

In the Connection Properties select Driver Properties. Then either locate the includeSynonyms parameter in the list or insert it. Set the value to true, apply the settings and re-connect.

Tables of type InnoDB in MySQL that are not displayed in the references graph has been verified to be a bug in older versions of the Connector/J JDBC Driver. Please upgrade to at least version 3.0.9.

Accessing a table in the Data tab or in the SQL Commander that contain a DATETIME column sometimes report the Value '0000-00-00' can not be represented as java.sql.Timestamp error in the debug window. The complete column turns red when this happen.

This error is reported by the Connector/J driver as a result of having defined the default value for the DATETIME column to 0000-00-00 00:00:00. The default behavior when this happen is that the driver fails.

Solution:

1. Select the MySQL database connection in the objects tree
2. Select the "Connection" tab and the "Properties" sub tab
3. In the category tree choose "Driver Properties"
4. In the list of properties locate zeroDateTimeBehavior. The following is an excerpt from the Connector/J documentation that describes the zeroDateTimeBehavior property.
   
   What should happen when the driver encounters DATETIME values that are composed entirely of zeroes (used by MySQL to represent invalid dates)? Valid values are 'exception', 'round' and 'convertToNull'.
   
   
5. Enter one of the valid choices in the value field.
6. Press "Apply" and then connect the database.

I can't see bar as column header in the result set for the following query. I always get foo.

   select foo as 'bar' from mytable

Solution:

In Connector/J 5.1 MySQL decided to change how their JDBC driver handle aliases. The workaround is to set the driver property useOldAliasMetadataBehavior = true in the Connection Properties in DbVisualizer.

I get the following when connecting to Sybase ASE with the JConnect driver:

JZ006: Caught IOException: java.io.IOException:
JZ0I6: An error occured converting UNICODE to the
       charset used by the server.
Error message: java.io.CharConversionException:
java.io.UnsupportedEncodingException: hp-roman8

The solution is simply to add ?charset=iso_1 last in the database URL:

jdbc:sybase:Tds:localhost:2048/?charset=iso_1

Another option is by adding a driver property (connection properties) named charset with the value iso_1.

The jTDS driver cannot display any showplan produced by Sybase ASE. The workaround is to use the jConnect JDBC driver.

Enable Show Detailed Error Messages in the options section under connection setup.

Disable Show Detailed Error Messages in the options section under connection setup.

Some DB2 users report that the following error occur while exploring the database objects tree:

An error occurred while executing the database request for:
DB2/LINUX
SQL09054
IBM DB2 JDBC Universal Driver Architecture
3.57.82

Short message:
DB2 SQL Error: SQLCODE=-443, SQLSTATE=38553, SQLERRMC=SYSIBM.SQLTABLES;
TABLES;SYSIBM:CLI:-805, DRIVER=3.57.82

The command that caused the problem:
getTables

Long Message:
DB2 SQL Error: SQLCODE=-443, SQLSTATE=38553, SQLERRMC=SYSIBM.SQLTABLES;
TABLES;SYSIBM:CLI:-805, DRIVER=3.57.82

Details:
  Type: com.ibm.db2.jcc.am.SqlException
  Error Code: -443
  SQL State: 38553

This error is most often related to the DB2 server that has been upgrading with a fixpak. The problem is that there are a few additional steps that need to be performed on the server to make JDBC work properly. Check the following web page for more information:
http://www-01.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=swg21215626

Use the jTDS JDBC driver to connect via Windows Authentication. Read more in: http://jtds.sourceforge.net/faq.html and the domain property.

Note: The jTDS driver is delivered with DbVisualizer since version 6.
If you are using another version just download and install it.

Add the domain driver property in the DbVisualizer connection properties.

If you are working with temporary tables then make sure to enclose these SQL statements as anonymous SQL blocks.

Example:

--/
select * from mytemptable
/

The MERGE command for SQL Server require that the statement ends with a semicolon (;) and that the semicolon remain with the statement when it is executed by the DB server. DbVisualizer use semicolon as the default statement separator and split multiple statements based on the position of semicolons.

To fix this insert the @delimiter command just before the MERGE command in the SQL Commander to temporarily change the statement separator in DbVisualizer.

The following example show how to re-define the statement delimiter to %%.

@delimiter %%;
MERGE x AS y
<code here>
;
@delimiter ;%%

The last @delimiter ;%% command revert the statement delimiter from %% to semicolon.

If the MERGE command is the only statement in the SQL editor then you may instead of the above run it with SQL->Execute Buffer.

If you are working with temporary tables then make sure to enclose these SQL statements as anonymous SQL blocks.

Example:

--/
select * from mytemptable
/

How to's

This is supported in the DbVisualizer Pro edition. Just enter the SQL Statements and delimit them by the SQL Statement delimiter that has been specified in Tool Properties (default is ";").

The following is a general description on how to edit data using the variable substitution feature.

1. First select the table in the Database Objects tree.
2. Select the "Data" tab for the actual table
3. Display the popup menu while the mouse pointer is in the grid area. Do this by pressing the right mouse button.
4. The popup menu lists the following editing choices:
   
   
   • insert into
   • insert COPY into
   • update where
   • delete from
   All of these choices except "insert into" requires at least one cell in one row to be selected. These selected cells will form the items in the final "where" clause. Make sure you select the appropriate cells that uniquely identifies the row you are about to process.
5. Once the requested menu choice has been selected will the SQL Commander be displayed. The edit area now contains a pseudo SQL statement. This statement contains DbVisualizer variables and default values depending on the actual operation.
6. Now press Execute in the SQL Commander.
7. A form is displayed with all data presented.
8. Do the desired changes and press Execute when you are ready.
9. Done!

DbVisualizer is configured by default to use a maxmimum of 512 MB in the Java VM. The following explains how to increase the memory for each platform.

Windows/Linux/UNIX:

1. Open the dbvis.vmoptions options file in a texteditor. (This file is located in the installation directory for DbVisualizer).
2. Any Java system property can be added to this file and each row is interpreted as a standard system property to the Java VM
3. To increase the maximum memory available for Java modify the following property:

   -Xmx1024m

   (This example sets the memory to 1024MB but you can set it to any value that is appropriate for your system).

Mac OS X:

On Mac OS X, edit the Info.plist file to change the Java VM parameters including the maximum memory property.

Read more in Changing properties and Java VM on Mac OS X.

Windows/Unix/Linux:

1. In the DbVisualizer installation directory there is a .install4jdirectory.
2. In this directory create a file named pref_jre.cfg if it doesn't already exist.
3. Open the file in a text editor
4. Add the complete path to the root directory for the Java installation you want to use.
   Example: C:\Program Files\Java\jre6.

Mac OS X:

Read more in Changing properties and Java VM on Mac OS X.

Read more in FAQ - Mac OS X.