OOW - Monday - Sessions, Benelux Party and OTN Night

The sessions I followed on Monday...

I slightly changed my schedule as I'm getting more involved in the APEX "thing".

I should have followed "The future of Database Technology", but I changed it in "Oracle Application Express, Now and in the Future".
I'm glad I did as it was an excellent presentation and an opportunity to finalize our meeting of Wednesday 7pm.

Oracle Application Express, Now and in the Future (by Michael Hichwa, Marc Sewtz and Marco Adelfio)
It was exciting to see Mike presenting APEX with so much passion! You can see he really loves the product, works with it and listens to the people.
Mike gave an overview of the current features of APEX and what we can expect in 3.0. Here're some (but this can still change):

• Microsoft Access Application Migration
• Flash charting
• XML Publisher Reporting Integration
• More AJAX integration (for ex. WYSIWYG Drag and Drop Form Layout)
• No need for Apache anymore (as it is with Oracle XE, EPG - embedded plsql gateway in the database)

Although I develop already a long time with APEX, I learned something new from the demo Marc Sewtz gave - use of the "Edit links": when you're in your form and run it and click the edit links button on the bottom of the page, you can immediately edit an item. I usually do it the old way, means Edit Form, change and edit item, run the form, edit it again etc.
As Tom Kyte mentions it a lot "I learn a new thing every single day" and "Things you think you know, can change".
APEX was also mentioned in the Keynote speech! Although Scott isn't at OOW he blogged about it, the information flow is going so fast these days! You can also read more information on John's blog.

Building Media-Rich Business Application Using Oracle interMedia and Oracle Application Express (by an Oracle presales)
He showed how you can integrate APEX with interMedia to for ex. stock your pictures and videos. There wasn't something really new in this session for me as I use this technique also in DG Tournament. Although he created a nice wizard to upload and download the images. He'll make it available in the next days, so that's something you can be interested in.

User-Managed Metadata: Oracle Application Express meets Oracle Warehouse Builder 10gR2 (by two people of Charlotte city)
Basically they showed how they used OWB for their data warehouse and how they integrated APEX for the cleansing part. As the data comes from a lot of different sources they had some problems with codes which meant the same but weren't for ex. FN for Finance in one system and FIN in an other. To solve this, OWB pushed the unknown codes in a table on which an APEX application was written to allow correcting the data in a user friendly environment.

Unleashing the Power of Oracle Streams (by Oracle)
This session showed the purpose of Oracle Streams and gave some examples how to use them. You should look at OTN if you're interested in this area as there's a lot of information about it.
I can't really write everything what was said as Oracle Streams is so "big". The only thing I can say is that it's really powerful and can be useful for everybody.

Benelux Cocktailparty at Bubble Lounge
Oracle organized a party for all people from the Benelux in the Bubble Lounge, near the famous building Transamerica Pyramid. This building was huge! The party was really useful as it's almost impossible to find each other in a crowd of more than 40.000 people!
In the Bubble Lounge we got some high quality snacks (sashimi, shrimps, ...) and champagne. I suppose that's why it's called Bubble Lounge ;-)
It was amazing to meet people I didn't see for years in San Francisco! As a consultant I come at a lot of customers, but meeting them again in SF is unreal!

OTN Night
After the Benelux party I went with some of the Oracle Belgium representatives to the OTN Night where I also would meet John. I didn't find John (Steve and he went to their hotel early) but I had a nice discussion with some other people concerning the use of APEX in their company. I also catched an Oracle t-shirt, I suppose I was lucky ;-) I didn't stay that long neither as I felt the tireness too. At the hotel I quickly read my mail and some blogs. I was to tired to blog myself, but I set the alarm early to catch up.