The Database Tool Every Programmer Needs
TCThe Coding Sloth@TheCodingSloth · 643K subscribers
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- Oct 21, 2025
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0:00–0:19Welcome aboard. If you're watching this video, then let me be the first to say congratulations.
Structure
Welcome aboard. If you're watching this video, then let me be the first to say congratulations. You've recently been hired by Slothcorp, one of the greatest tech companies to ever exist, and this is your first official day of database training. As a developer here at Slothcorp, you'll be the one maintaining our database power systems, our internal messaging, our payroll system, our e-commerce platform, our streaming service. Every single app here runs on databases, and when something breaks Why can't I see my paycheck? you'll be the one who has to fix it. Now, here at Slothcorp, we specifically use Oracle databases for everything, and we also use the MCP server for Oracle to help us. Why? Because we're an enterprise company, and Oracle handles our massive scale, security requirements, and mission-critical operations. Plus, this video is sponsored by Oracle. Our CEO, Sloth, made this decision personally, and whatever the CEO says, goes. Now, you probably have experience with Oracle databases, but you probably haven't heard of the MCP server for Oracle. Let me show you what database work was like before we had this amazing tool. As you know, most databases use SQL, or Structured Query Language. We here at Slothcorp like to call it sequel. It's been around since the 1970s. Wow! Developers here spend hours and hours and hours writing schemas, queries, debugging, Even the simplest questions require a
Watch from 0:12lot of SQL. For example, which customers placed orders last month? Sounds simple, right? Well, here's what that actually looks like in SQL. You see, champ, this stuff takes a lot of time, and sometimes it's not simple. It's enough to drive any developer to, you know, Writing SQL takes time, patience, and practice, which is exactly why we need tech professionals like you. Not everyone has the patience to deal with joins, and subqueries, and aggregate functions. But, wouldn't it be nice if we could search our database like we were talking to a normal person? Or if we could ask our database to write some of the SQL for us, so we can focus on the more important stuff. Wouldn't that be amazing? You would write less SQL, your job would be easier, which means you would be more productive, and that means Slothcorp will get more value out of you. Well, my friend, that brings us to the modern day. You see, Oracle had a great idea. What if they could let AI assistants interact with their SQL CL tool? This would let AI assistants perform data operations for you through natural language. And so, they turned their SQL CL tool into an MCP server. Now, why MCP? Well, Oracle understands that developers have strong opinions about their tools, and they respect that, which is why an MCP server is the perfect choice for this. Whether you're team Claude, team cursor, team Windsurf, or even team Copilot, any AI assistant tool that supports MCP will work with this. And the best part? It's completely free.
Watch from 1:44The MCP server, the SQL CL tool, and even the database itself, no cost. However, those AI assistants you're using, that's between you and them. So, if you get a bill, just know it's not coming from Oracle. And thanks to this tool, working with Oracle databases has never been easier. Watch. Let's say you just joined the Sloth Pay team, and you need to understand the database. Normally, this would take a lot of manual exploration, but with this new tool, all you have to do is ask, "Connect to my Sloth Pay database and tell me about what kind of data I have in there." And then I'm going to reference the MCP tools I should use. And once I send that request, the AI assistant is going to connect to my database, and it's going to ask me if this is the correct database. I approve it, and after that, it's going to run some SQL queries to get some information about the database. And after it gets that information, I can just ask it questions about the database, and get the information in an easy-to-understand way. Wow! Isn't that amazing? But, that's not all this tool can do. You can generate test data based off the table structure and relationships. You can also get advanced analytics of your database. And if you need a visual, just ask, and it'll generate a visual using a programming language like Python. And if you've never used SQL or an Oracle database, then I don't know how you got this job. Ha ha. But, thanks to this tool, you now have a personal tutor to teach you SQL and how to use Oracle databases. And finally, the big one. With this tool, you can now do full-stack prototyping.
Watch from 3:15Wow! AI assistants could already write code, but it would write code for a database that didn't exist yet. But now, with this MCP server, it can handle everything. The AI can help you create your tables, populate them with test data, and write the code to use it properly, all in one conversation. Wow! I already know what you're thinking. Wow, AI can do my job now. I can get paid and do no work. Yeah! No. Let me stop you right there, trainee. While we may be slow and lazy here at Slothcorp, we're not stupid. Now, we respect your lazy attitude, but let's set some expectations. We are not going to teach you how to hand over your job to AI. We are not going to say SQL is dead, and we are absolutely not going to let artificial intelligence run our production databases. And if I catch anyone doing what the youths call vibe coding, you know, just letting the AI do whatever it wants without oversight, you'll be having a very uncomfortable conversation with HR. And don't even think about lying to us, because Oracle added some safety recommendations that you will be following, and the MCP server tracks and monitors every operation you do with an LLM. So, we'll have proof on everything you do. Understand? Great! Let's get your environment set up. First, we're going to need an Oracle database to work with. And don't worry, the database is free. We know you're broke and cheap, so we'll head over to Oracle's website, and we're going to use the Oracle Database Free section, and you'll see three options to choose from.
Watch from 4:35We're going to be using the third way, Docker, because it's the easiest way to get everybody on the same page. And don't worry if you've never used Docker before. If you want to learn more and be a superstar employee, you can watch our Docker training video. All right, we're going to copy this command right here. You're going to open up your terminal. Now, before we run the command, make sure you have the Docker CLI installed. You can check if it's working by running the Docker command in your terminal. Once you know Docker is running, run the command and let it download. After it finishes downloading, we can now create and start a new database. Now, if you're feeling lazy, or you don't care about configurations, you can start a database with this command. But, for this training video, we're going to use this command. I've left this exact command in the description below, so you can just copy and paste it. All we're doing is setting up some configurations to make our lives easier when we have to connect it to the MCP server. Once you have that command ready, press enter, and Docker will start the database initialization process. Now, if this command line stuff is too complicated for you, and you prefer a nice GUI, you can also do all of this through Docker Desktop. It'll do the same results in a friendlier interface. Now, once you run this command, whether through the terminal or Docker Desktop, you'll see a lot of messages scrolling by, and that's completely normal. So, just be patient and wait for the magic words, "Database is ready to use." Once you see that message, your Oracle database is up and running. Now, all we have to do is set up the MCP server, so your AI assistant can use the database. First, we're going to start with the easy route, VS Code.
Watch from 5:59Now, if you're using VS Code, you can use the Oracle SQL Developer extension. Look for that extension in the marketplace and install it. The extension is packed with a lot of features, but the most important thing for us is that it comes with a SQL CL tool built into it. Once you install that extension, it automatically registers the MCP server with VS Code, which means you're basically done. All you have to do now is add your database connection. In order to do that, all you have to do is click the SQL Developer icon in the sidebar, and you'll see this section that says "No database connections found." You're going to click the Create Connection button, and it'll ask for information. Now, some of these values we set in our Docker command, and some of them are Oracle defaults. The connection name, this one we can actually call it whatever we want. For this training video, I'm going to call it Slothcorp training DB. For username, it's going to have a value of system. This is Oracle's default admin user. If you plan on using this on production systems, I recommend creating a different user for this with the least amount of permissions, just for security reasons. For this tutorial, we're going to keep system. And the password, this is from our Docker command, which we used Slothcorp rocks. If you didn't use a configuration, you're going to have to check your Docker logs. You can also change the password with this command. For hostname, it's just going to be localhost, since we're connecting through our local machine. And for the port, it's going to be 1,521. This is what we used in the Docker command, but it's also the default value. As for service name, it's going to be free PDB1. This is Oracle's default name. If you want to verify yours, you should have seen it when you were running the Docker command. Now, if you use the configurations in this training video, this is how the information should look. Once you have everything, just click Test Connection
Watch from 7:19to make sure everything works. And if everything's correct, it'll say "Test passed," and you're ready to connect. If it doesn't, you'll get an error, and you're going to have to figure that out. Once you connect to the database, you're done. AI can now access your database and help you out. Now, for those of you that aren't using VS Code, and don't worry, it's still pretty easy and straightforward. You just need to install a couple things first. First, you're going to need the Oracle SQL CL tool. Make sure it's version 25.2.0 or higher, and you're also going to need a Java Runtime Environment that's version 17 or higher. I put both of them in the description. Now, this is an optional step, but once you have both of them installed, add the SQL CL tool to your path environment. This just makes it easy to run the command. And once you have that, all we have to do now is set up the database connection in our SQL CL tool. So, in order to do that, you're going to open up your terminal, and inside the terminal, you're going to type this command, "SQL /nolog". This just launches the SQL CL tool without having to connect to anything. All that's left to do is connect to the database. So, in order to do that, we have to run this command. This command is just like the VS Code setup, just in command line form. It's asking for the exact same information, connection name, username, password, hostname, port, and service name. Like I said before, most of this information was in the Docker configuration or Oracle defaults. Once you run that command, it'll give you an overview of all the information, and it should say connected. Once you see that, we're basically done. All that's left to do is to add the MCP server information to whatever AI tool you like to use. And in order to do that, it depends on the AI tool you like to use, but most likely it'll be in a JSON configuration file.
Watch from 8:50The name should be SQL CL. The command should be your absolute path to your SQL CL installation. And for the arguments, it should be {dash} MCP. This tells SQL CL to be in MCP mode. All right, let's make sure everything works. Whether you did it through VS Code or a manual setup, open your AI assistant and try this simple command: list my available database connections. And make sure to reference the MCP tools. Run the command, and if everything works correctly, it should use the list connection tool. If it does, then congratulations. Your environment is fully set up. You have successfully completed your training, and now you are one step closer to revolutionizing And remember, everything is in the description. All the Oracle tools, the MCP server, they're all free. All the commands you need to run the server, everything you need is in the description. Thank you for completing your Sloth Corp database training, and now get out there, build something amazing, and make us some profit.
Watch from 10:18Full transcript
- 0:12
Welcome aboard. If you're watching this video, then let me be the first to say congratulations. You've recently been hired by Slothcorp, one of the greatest tech companies to ever exist, and this is your first official day of database training. As a developer here at Slothcorp, you'll be the one maintaining our database
- 0:33
power systems, our internal messaging, our payroll system, our e-commerce platform, our streaming service. Every single app here runs on databases, and when something breaks Why can't I see my paycheck? you'll be the one who has to fix it. Now, here at Slothcorp, we specifically use Oracle databases for everything, and we also use the MCP server for Oracle to
- 0:54
help us. Why? Because we're an enterprise company, and Oracle handles our massive scale, security requirements, and mission-critical operations. Plus, this video is sponsored by Oracle. Our CEO, Sloth, made this decision personally, and whatever the CEO says, goes. Now, you probably have experience
- 1:15
with Oracle databases, but you probably haven't heard of the MCP server for Oracle. Let me show you what database work was like before we had this amazing tool. As you know, most databases use SQL, or Structured Query Language. We here at Slothcorp like to call it sequel. It's been around since the 1970s. Wow! Developers here spend hours
- 1:37
and hours and hours writing schemas, queries, debugging, Even the simplest questions require a lot of SQL. For example, which customers placed orders last month? Sounds simple, right? Well, here's what that actually looks like in SQL. You see, champ, this stuff takes a lot
- 1:57
of time, and sometimes it's not simple. It's enough to drive any developer to, you know, Writing SQL takes time, patience, and practice, which is exactly why we need tech professionals like you. Not everyone has the patience to deal with joins, and subqueries, and aggregate functions. But, wouldn't it be nice if we could search our database
- 2:19
like we were talking to a normal person? Or if we could ask our database to write some of the SQL for us, so we can focus on the more important stuff. Wouldn't that be amazing? You would write less SQL, your job would be easier, which means you would be more productive, and that means Slothcorp will get more value out of you. Well, my friend, that brings us to the modern day. You see, Oracle had a great
- 2:41
idea. What if they could let AI assistants interact with their SQL CL tool? This would let AI assistants perform data operations for you through natural language. And so, they turned their SQL CL tool into an MCP server. Now, why MCP? Well, Oracle understands that developers have strong opinions about their tools, and they respect that, which is why an MCP server is the
- 3:03
perfect choice for this. Whether you're team Claude, team cursor, team Windsurf, or even team Copilot, any AI assistant tool that supports MCP will work with this. And the best part? It's completely free. The MCP server, the SQL CL tool, and even the database itself, no cost. However, those AI assistants you're using, that's between you and them. So,
- 3:24
if you get a bill, just know it's not coming from Oracle. And thanks to this tool, working with Oracle databases has never been easier. Watch. Let's say you just joined the Sloth Pay team, and you need to understand the database. Normally, this would take a lot of manual exploration, but with this new tool, all you have to do is ask, "Connect to my Sloth Pay database and tell me about what kind of data I have
- 3:44
in there." And then I'm going to reference the MCP tools I should use. And once I send that request, the AI assistant is going to connect to my database, and it's going to ask me if this is the correct database. I approve it, and after that, it's going to run some SQL queries to get some information about the database. And after it gets that information, I can just ask it questions about the database, and get the information in an easy-to-understand way. Wow!
- 4:05
Isn't that amazing? But, that's not all this tool can do. You can generate test data based off the table structure and relationships. You can also get advanced analytics of your database. And if you need a visual, just ask, and it'll generate a visual using a programming language like Python. And if you've never used SQL or an Oracle database, then I don't know how you got this job. Ha ha. But, thanks to this tool, you now
- 4:25
have a personal tutor to teach you SQL and how to use Oracle databases. And finally, the big one. With this tool, you can now do full-stack prototyping. Wow! AI assistants could already write code, but it would write code for a database that didn't exist yet. But now, with this MCP server, it can handle everything. The AI can help you create your tables, populate them with test
- 4:47
data, and write the code to use it properly, all in one conversation. Wow! I already know what you're thinking. Wow, AI can do my job now. I can get paid and do no work. Yeah! No. Let me stop you right there, trainee. While we may be slow and lazy here at Slothcorp, we're not stupid. Now, we respect your lazy attitude, but let's set some expectations. We are not going to teach
- 5:08
you how to hand over your job to AI. We are not going to say SQL is dead, and we are absolutely not going to let artificial intelligence run our production databases. And if I catch anyone doing what the youths call vibe coding, you know, just letting the AI do whatever it wants without oversight, you'll be having a very uncomfortable
- 5:29
conversation with HR. And don't even think about lying to us, because Oracle added some safety recommendations that you will be following, and the MCP server tracks and monitors every operation you do with an LLM. So, we'll have proof on everything you do. Understand? Great! Let's get your environment set up. First, we're going to need an Oracle
- 5:49
database to work with. And don't worry, the database is free. We know you're broke and cheap, so we'll head over to Oracle's website, and we're going to use the Oracle Database Free section, and you'll see three options to choose from. We're going to be using the third way, Docker, because it's the easiest way to get everybody on the same page. And don't worry if you've never used Docker before. If you want to learn more and be a superstar employee, you can watch our
- 6:11
Docker training video. All right, we're going to copy this command right here. You're going to open up your terminal. Now, before we run the command, make sure you have the Docker CLI installed. You can check if it's working by running the Docker command in your terminal. Once you know Docker is running, run the command and let it download. After it finishes downloading, we can now create and start a new database. Now, if you're feeling lazy, or you don't care about configurations, you can start a database
- 6:33
with this command. But, for this training video, we're going to use this command. I've left this exact command in the description below, so you can just copy and paste it. All we're doing is setting up some configurations to make our lives easier when we have to connect it to the MCP server. Once you have that command ready, press enter, and Docker will start the database initialization process. Now, if this command line stuff is too complicated for you, and you
- 6:54
prefer a nice GUI, you can also do all of this through Docker Desktop. It'll do the same results in a friendlier interface. Now, once you run this command, whether through the terminal or Docker Desktop, you'll see a lot of messages scrolling by, and that's completely normal. So, just be patient and wait for the magic words, "Database is ready to use." Once you see that message, your Oracle database is up and running. Now, all we have to do is set
- 7:14
up the MCP server, so your AI assistant can use the database. First, we're going to start with the easy route, VS Code. Now, if you're using VS Code, you can use the Oracle SQL Developer extension. Look for that extension in the marketplace and install it. The extension is packed with a lot of features, but the most important thing for us is that it comes with a SQL CL tool built into it. Once you install that extension, it automatically
- 7:34
registers the MCP server with VS Code, which means you're basically done. All you have to do now is add your database connection. In order to do that, all you have to do is click the SQL Developer icon in the sidebar, and you'll see this section that says "No database connections found." You're going to click the Create Connection button, and it'll ask for information. Now, some of these values we set in our Docker command, and some of them are Oracle defaults. The connection name, this one
- 7:56
we can actually call it whatever we want. For this training video, I'm going to call it Slothcorp training DB. For username, it's going to have a value of system. This is Oracle's default admin user. If you plan on using this on production systems, I recommend creating a different user for this with the least amount of permissions, just for security reasons. For this tutorial, we're going to keep system. And the password, this is from our Docker command, which we
- 8:18
used Slothcorp rocks. If you didn't use a configuration, you're going to have to check your Docker logs. You can also change the password with this command. For hostname, it's just going to be localhost, since we're connecting through our local machine. And for the port, it's going to be 1,521. This is what we used in the Docker command, but it's also the default value. As for service name, it's going to be free PDB1. This is Oracle's
- 8:39
default name. If you want to verify yours, you should have seen it when you were running the Docker command. Now, if you use the configurations in this training video, this is how the information should look. Once you have everything, just click Test Connection to make sure everything works. And if everything's correct, it'll say "Test passed," and you're ready to connect. If it doesn't, you'll get an error, and you're going to have to figure that out. Once you connect to the database, you're done. AI can now access your database
- 9:01
and help you out. Now, for those of you that aren't using VS Code, and don't worry, it's still pretty easy and straightforward. You just need to install a couple things first. First, you're going to need the Oracle SQL CL tool. Make sure it's version 25.2.0 or higher, and you're also going to need a Java Runtime Environment that's version 17 or higher. I put both of them in the description. Now, this is an
- 9:22
optional step, but once you have both of them installed, add the SQL CL tool to your path environment. This just makes it easy to run the command. And once you have that, all we have to do now is set up the database connection in our SQL CL tool. So, in order to do that, you're going to open up your terminal, and inside the terminal, you're going to type this command, "SQL /nolog". This just launches the SQL CL tool without having to connect to anything. All
- 9:42
that's left to do is connect to the database. So, in order to do that, we have to run this command. This command is just like the VS Code setup, just in command line form. It's asking for the exact same information, connection name, username, password, hostname, port, and service name. Like I said before, most of this information was in the Docker configuration or Oracle defaults. Once you run that command, it'll give you an
- 10:04
overview of all the information, and it should say connected. Once you see that, we're basically done. All that's left to do is to add the MCP server information to whatever AI tool you like to use. And in order to do that, it depends on the AI tool you like to use, but most likely it'll be in a JSON configuration file. The name should be SQL CL. The command should be your absolute path to your SQL CL installation. And for the arguments,
- 10:24
it should be {dash} MCP. This tells SQL CL to be in MCP mode. All right, let's make sure everything works. Whether you did it through VS Code or a manual setup, open your AI assistant and try this simple command: list my available database connections. And make sure to reference the MCP tools. Run the command, and if everything works correctly, it should use the list connection tool. If it does, then
- 10:45
congratulations. Your environment is fully set up. You have successfully completed your training, and now you are one step closer to revolutionizing And remember, everything is in the description. All the Oracle tools, the MCP server, they're all free. All the commands you need to run the server, everything you need is in the description. Thank you for completing
- 11:05
your Sloth Corp database training, and now get out there, build something amazing, and make us some profit.
Description
Time is money employee. Go download those Oracle tools:
Install SQL Developer Extension and/or SQLcl: https://www.oracle.com/database/sqlde...
Oracle DB Download: https://www.oracle.com/database/techn...
Java download: https://www.oracle.com/java/technolog...
Try Oracle AI Database 26ai: https://www.oracle.com/database/free/...
// ORACLE CLI COMMANDS //
1. Get DB Image: docker pull container-registry.oracle.com/database/free:latest
2. Create New DB With Configs: docker run --name oracle-free -p 1521:1521 -e ORACLE_PWD=SlothCorpRocks container-registry.oracle.com/database/free:latest
// MANUAL SQLcl INSTALL COMMANDS //
1. Start SQLcl: sql /nolog
2. Connect to DB: conn -save Sloth_Corp_Training_DB -savepwd system/SlothCorpRocks@//localhost:1521/freepdb1
SponsorThis video was sponsored by Oracle.
// SLOTH ARTISTS //
ugly looking sloths in the video: Me
// NEWSLETTER //
Sloth Bytes: https://slothbytes.beehiiv.com/subscribe
// BUSINESS INQUIRIES //
For business: thecodingsloth@smoothmedia.co
For brand partnerships: https://tally.so/r/mZVvKa
// SOCIALS //
Twitter: / thecodingsloth1
TikTok: / thecodingsloth
Discord: / discord
// TOOLS/THINGS I REALLY LIKE //
SponsorIf you wanna build 10x developer level projects check out CodeCrafters (40% off):
https://app.codecrafters.io/join?via=...
SponsorIf you want to build an awesome newsletter like Sloth Bytes I use beehiiv (20% off):
https://www.beehiiv.com?via=the-codin...
Sponsor(some of these links are affiliates, so I'll earn some money which supports the channel!)
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