Local APEX patched successfully

This morning I patched my local Application Express installations to 3.1.1.

I went to Metalink to download the patch. The full APEX 3.1.1 installation is also available now.

Unzip the file and read the Patch notes. Basically I had to login as SYS on my 11g database and run apxpatch.sql. After 4:36 minutes my APEX 3.1 was patched to 3.1.1. The only thing left to do was to copy the images directory. This is different if you run Apache or the Embedded PLSQL Gateway. A few seconds later I was done.

Starting my listener and going to APEX in my browser and seeing it worked ;-)

Nice if everything is going so smoothly! Thanks APEX-team.

APEX 3.1.1 Patch set released

Joel Kallman just blogged that the Oracle Application Express 3.1.1 patch is released on Metalink.

As it's already night in Belgium, I'll have a look at it tomorrow. The full version will hopefully be available by then too.

There are no new features, just bug fixes. Time to update our servers ;-)

A lot of APEX at ODTUG and Sneak Preview

It's not that long anymore before Kaleidoscope is starting.

It looks like Oracle Application Express (APEX) is getting a lot of attention! Rumors are we might see some nice new things...

On Sunday there is a full day Case Studies, titled: "The Seasoning of Application Express – Must Hear Success Stories". Together with one of our clients we present "Oracle Application Express: Power to the People ", a non-technical presentation, but it will show how people adopt APEX in one of the biggest biotechnology company.

From Monday till Wednesday there are a lot (18!) APEX sessions:

• Building the New Stuff: AJAX , JSON, and APEX 3.1 by Carl Backstrom
• Advanced Oracle Application Express Tips and Techniques by Chris Ostrowski
  
• APEX Cheat Sheet 3 by Karen Cannell
• Creating Advanced Charts in Oracle Application Express by Dimitri Gielis
  
• APEX Development: Watch It Live by Bill Holtzman
• Creating Dynamite Applications with Application Express that Deliver by Kathy Hunsicker
• Explore and Benefit the APEX Repository by Michiel Jonkers
• Go Global with Oracle Application Express by Joel Kallman
• Writing a Custom Authentication Scheme for Application Express: A Case Study by Raj Mattamal
• Migrating from Access to Oracle Application Express by Josh Millinger
• How to Hack an Oracle Application Express Application by Anton Nielsen
• Oracle Application Express (APEX) Version 3.1 by David Peake
• Application Express in Support of Institutional Strategic Planning by Tanya Podchiyska
• APEX Hints, Tips and Best Practices by John Scott
• You Can't Do THAT in a Browser! Extending Oracle APEX with Third Party Components by Scott Spendolini
• Use the Power of APEX Dictionary Views to Increase the Quality of Your APEX Applications by Karen Van Hellemont and Jan Huyzentruyt
• Increase Your Oracle APEX Development Productivity with Open Source Tools by Patrick Wolf
• Building Advanced Tabular Forms by Marcie Young

On Thursday I'm also on stage for the APEX vs. ADF Shootout.
Together with my friend, Lucas Jellema, we'll try to show you both environments and talk when to use what. When we did this talk in the Netherlands in December it was really fun. The public at ODTUG will be very different, so I'm curious to see how it will go.
But some people warned me! I got told I will be in the ring with an opponent that is heavily prepared and is getting help from some smart people. Like in boxing, I guess in the ring friends don't count anymore... I see it as I don't have anything to lose. Everybody expect the ADF monster will eat APEX, right? I hope they will show mercy with such a tiny boy ;-)

As a lot of European people might not have the opportunity to fly to the States, my friends at AMIS are organizing an ODTUG Sneak Preview. This event is completely free, but you'll have to register for it. Some of the presentations that will be at ODTUG, will be hold on the event. As you can see in the agenda, I'm also doing one of my presentations.

Some people asked when I would be in the Netherlands, so you might catch me there. Or you can come to our European APEX Training Days in Utrecht in September.

European APEX Training Days in the Netherlands

It's starting to become a tradition... After our successful Oracle Application Express training days in Brussels (September 2007) and London (March 2008) it's time to announce our third European APEX Training Days. This time it will be held in Utrecht, the Netherlands.

The environment will be a bit different. We didn't go for the Plaza hotel, instead we went for a green "theme". The setting and architecture of the Mitland hotel make you feel as if you’re in the middle of the countryside! Nevertheless, it's only 5 minutes from the city of Utrecht.

Below you find the agenda. Depending feedback we might change some topics, but these are the topics we believe will bring you to the "next" level APEX developer.


You find more information about the training days at the website of Apex Evangelists.

Hope to see you there.

Vote for APEX, somebody gets worried

OracleNerd, aka Chet Justice, wrote a blogpost that his poll about "Have you used Oracle Application Express" doesn't have that many votes for APEX.

I believe he's getting a bit worried, so I decided to call the tight APEX community to vote for APEX on his survey.

Maybe the APEX users don't read his blog or the people who voted just didn't know about APEX... Even without the big Oracle marketing machine, I can't believe that APEX is still not that known. Application Express is getting more and more adopted, especially with Oracle 11g it's taking off. So, I don't worry that much, otherwise I wouldn't have founded a company only doing APEX ;-)

Lets give OracleNerd a warm APEX vote, so he also feels a bit better!

Sometimes you love you chose Oracle

The last days it's really hot in Belgium. Working when it's hot is not good for our brains and the computers as they get overheated.

Some people are distracted as they think about the pool all the time, some others get grumphy and some others make mistakes...

In the last couple of days I had to use the flashback feature of the Oracle database more than the last 6 months together. When you get a mail like: "I had to change something, but accidentally deleted the whole text. Can you please put it back?"

At that time you're so glad you use an Oracle database! Can you do something like this in MySQL or MS SQL Server?

SELECT *
FROM my_table AS OF TIMESTAMP TO_TIMESTAMP('2008-05-12 08:00:00', 'YYYY-MM-DD HH24:MI:SS');

Another command I had to use for myself, when I dropped a table in development, but forget to look at the logic of an existing trigger of that dropped table:

FLASHBACK TABLE my_table TO BEFORE DROP;

I guess everybody already knew about flashback in Oracle (if not, Tim Hall wrote a nice compact page about flashback), but then I wonder sometimes why people ask me if APEX also runs with other databases... Oracle has to many nice features buildin, so some want to use another database I guess ;-)

I'm happy the sun is shining and I'm using an Oracle database during these days.

ApexBlogs.info updated

I updated apexblogs.info with a Blog Roll on the right side, so next to clicking on the arrow after Blog Selection, which would slide down and show you the aggregated blogs too, you have a link to all APEX blogs.

I also added support for Windows Live blogs. So if you've a blog like Jason Aughenbaugh, you can get aggregated too.

If you're also blogging about Oracle Application Express (APEX), but don't find yourself in the list, please put a comment on this entry and I'll add you.

If you don't have a blog yourself, but want to do a blog post with somebody or just share your ideas, that's also possible. Login to the site (if you don't have a login, create one for free) and go to Your Posts. In there you can write your blog post and it will be shown in the aggregated blogs screen.

Posting HTML items in an APEX environment

Ever got a nasty HTTP 404 error message in APEX? Or your url stays at /pls/apex/wwv_flow.accept and it doesn't do anything?

I had one on apexblogs.info, but not all the time, only occasionally. I couldn't understand what was going on.

What I normally do is having a look insight my page in Application Express to see what's going on. If I don't see it directly, I try some debugging techniques to investigate further, but I didn't find anything special in APEX or SQL Developer.
With Screen Sharing on my Mac I can easily show it to others too. Especially with XP programming it's useful, so also this time I showed John Scott, my partner at Apex Evangelists. His reaction is always to look into the Apache logs and most of the time that's where you find more information, but even then...

This is what was in the Apache log when I got a 404 error on apexblogs.info:

Tue Apr 22 09:02:54 2008] [error] [client 127.0.0.1] [ecid: 1208851374:a.b.c.d:29454:0:667,0] mod_plsql: /pls/apex/wwv_flow.accept HTTP-404 \nwwv_flow.accept: SIGNATURE (parameter names) MISMATCH\nVARIABLES IN FORM NOT IN PROCEDURE: CODE\nNON-DEFAULT VARIABLES IN PROCEDURE NOT IN FORM: \n 11:44 MISMATCH\nVARIABLES IN FORM NOT IN PROCEDURE: CODE

I was pretty sure my variables where correct... John spotted it. Some posts included html items which APEX interpreted not correctly. Well, APEX shouldn't interpret it neither, so the fix was to escape the items. I couldn't escape the whole message (or data I get from the rss feeds) as I want to reproduce the post as accurate as possible.

I hope the problems with apexblogs.info are fixed now. Time to develop further and in the meanwhile, if you find another error, please tell me.

APEX SIG meeting - latest news

As I posted earlier, we had an APEX SIG (Oracle Application Express Special Interest Group) meeting at Collaborate 08.

David Peake, product manager of Application Express, gave some unofficial insights in what's coming... David just wrote an article on his blog about the Oracle Application Express New Features (> 3.1) 

I guess everybody knew the next release of APEX would be 3.1.1 which includes some fixes for the 3.1 release.

Other things we (as APEX community) requested for a while:  improved Tabular Forms and Error handling, 3.1 updated packaged applications, new white papers... They are logical next steps for post 3.1 (maybe not yet 3.1.1, but 3.2 or 4.0)

The biggest announcement however was the migration of Oracle Forms to Application Express. There were already some rumors about it, but it was never really said. I believe this migration tool and that APEX comes with 11g out-of-the-box, will be the big break-through for APEX.

In December, during the APEX vs ADF shootout, a lot of Forms people were in the room. Before (and still) Oracle marketing is pushing these Forms people to the Java stack, but in my opinion, migrating from Forms to APEX is the most logical step. Will migrating to APEX be a fit in 100% of the cases? Probably not, but the experience of the Forms people is more in line with APEX than with Java.

I'm curious to see how the APEX vs ADF shootout will be at ODTUG. I'm expecting to get a lively discussion in New Orleans as  there will be a lot of passionate and knowledgeable people in the room for both technologies! But I feel confident that the other "APEX-names" will back me up! I posted before APEX vs ADF: Round 2, that picture might become reality. When "they" catch me, Carl, John, Patrick etc will get into the ring ;-) It will be great fun!