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### 3.2 Connecting to a database

You can connect to a database by selecting the File|New Connection menu entry or the toolbar button. For more information about the menu and toolbar see Elements of the main window.

After selecting the menu you will be presented with the following dialog.

The filling out of this dialog is pretty straight forward but the options can vary depending on the selected connection provider.

Previous
  This list contains the previous connection made, selecting an entry from this list will set all the values to the right to the correct. Doubleclicking will connect straight away (only makes sense if you save passwords).
Connections
  Values to connect to this database again.
Connection provider
  The type of connection to create. TOra currently supports Teradata, PostgrSQL, Oracle and MySQL.
Username
  The username with which to connect to the database
Password
  The password to use for the connection. You can also configure TOra to remember your last used password (see Options)
Use SQL*Net
  This is perhaps the most difficult setting. This indicates whether to connect locally to the database or use SQL*Net. If you check this box the connection is made through the Oracle listener, otherwise a local connection usually using shared memory or named pipes is made. This is only available for Oracle connections.
Hostname
  The host on which the database resides.
Database
  What database to connect to. For Oracle, the listbox is filled with the values available in your tnsnames.ora file.
Connection Mode
  The type of connection to make. For Oracle, usually normal always suffices here. But sometimes during database administration SYS_DBA or SYS_OPER is needed. If you don't know what these mean you probably shouldn't be using them.
Color Session Identifier
  You can flag connections with an identfier. The pre-configured identifiers are None with no color, Testing in blue, Development in green and Production in red, but you can change the associated colors and even add some more (see Options).
Test button
  This button lets you test the configured connection without actually saving it.
Save button
  Using this button you can save the connection. Useful if you want to change something like passwords or color identifiers when you normally don't want to connect.
Import Connections
  You can import connections from TOra 1.3.x, Oracle SQL Developer 1.5 and SqirrelSQL 2.6.x. The import dialog is pretty straight forward, just select the type you wish to import and press Run.

Upon establishing a successful connection all the settings of the dialog will be saved and remembered when the next connection is made.