Thanks Hans,
in the "hang" situations, "STOP" does not work.
if i am constantly using DBViz, i do not have problems, so maybe it is a VPN problem. i will look into the VPN timeout issue and ask the client... i can report that some days the VPN is up forever, and other days it goes up and down and i have to reconnect/login. it may be that the VPN silently goes down (times out) after a period of inactivity but does not require a login? that is, it times out as far as dbviz is concerned, but it does not truly need me to reconnect? I will look into that aspect of my situation. (this may explain similar weirdness with eclipse and svn via VPN.)
when the VPN does disconnect, DBViz doesn't seem to be aware of this in the connection icon state. what i often do in these cases to avoid a freeze, is proactively click on the connection icon and choose "reconnect." the icon shows up as "pending", but i wait the normal connect time and i can then often resume working, though with some more weirdness:
1) some tabs will remain broken, so i create new ones.
2) maybe X minutes later, there will be a DBVis refresh, sending me back to the Object View tab, and the connection will be with the green checkmark icon.
this "freezing" behavior has resulted in me being very defensive and saving text in the various sql tabs, and in liberal use of profanity when i come back to a task only to find this otherwise great tool frozen. then i have to restart my train of thought, reload the tabs -- and i invariable lose something, and <sigh> deeply. other times, when i come back to the tool after being away for a while, i know that i should just quit the app and restart it to save myself aggravation.
so i appreciate your interest in getting to the bottom of this undesirable behavior.
i will try to do a better job of documenting. and i will ask about the VPN immediately!
Thanks again.