Is there a good alternative to SQL*PLUS for Oracle?

I presume that you want a low-overhead method of knocking out queries, but want more functions than SQL*Plus provides? Why not use Oracle's SQL Developer? It's free.

Install, make a new connection to your database, then just start typing a script. Press F5 to run it (or just the part of the script that you've highlighted).

Take a look at gqlplus. It wraps sql*plus on linux and makes it more user-friendly by adding things like command history, table name completion and so on.

Emacs can provide so much more powerful text editing features and functionality beyond the default SQL*Plus command-line interface.

Here are a few links on how to use Emacs as a wrapper for SQL*Plus:

• Emacs and Oracle
• EmacsWiki:SqlPlus