ODTUG08 - Sunday: APEX Symposium and APEX Websheets!

Sunday, the weather was not that good, there was some lightning and rain falling down, but it didn't really matter to me, as ODTUG Kaleidoscope kicked off with the Symposiums. Of course I went for the APEX Symposium...


Scott Spendolini, the moderator of the APEX Symposium, held a great keynote speech. He went through 431 slides in 30 minutes! It was great, he started from the year 1996 when he graduated and talked about that time and how the IT industry looked like way then. He build things up, so we saw the history of his life combined with the APEX releases and where it came from.
The second slide we needed to keep in mind: "Less is More" which I'm also an advocate of.

Mike Hichwa, the "father" of Oracle Application Express talked about how to position APEX, a quick overview of the architecture and the future of APEX. The future looks bright, the people who doubted about it, wait till you see Websheets! You liked the Interactive Reports, which is a new feature of APEX 3.1? You ain't seen nothing yet! The community asked for some time now, the ability to have better (more advanced) tabular forms... But Websheets is much more than a tabular form, it's a tool (or even application) in it's own! It's just phenomenal!
I hope to upload some screenshots tomorrow.

But that's not all, in the next release of APEX (probably 2009) we'll get a lot more: custom item types, declarative AJAX features, new 3rd party components, improved error handling and much more!

Another new tool Mike announced for the first time in public: "Data Modeling".
A lot of us need to go to another tool to model the database design (tables, pk/fk etc), but the above tool will solve that. I'm not sure you can use that tool as a standalone product or it will only be available through SQL Developer. But it means that APEX developers will get all the tools they need in SQL Developer and APEX. If the SQL Developer team also optimizes the team coding and subversion implementation it would be awesome and all my requests are full filled!

Remember: Oracle doesn't promise anything... I don't have the big disclaimer they always show, but it's subject to change.

After Mike's presentation it was time to show APEX in the real world with different use cases.

Bharadwaz Pappu & Brian Duffy talked about "Managing the Army's Enterprise Real Property Planning with Oracle APEX". They talked about their experience in APEX, I believe they used a name for APEX, "Force Multiplier". They also showed their application and the integration of DHTMLX Tree.

Kathy Hunsicker talked about "Creating Dynamite Applications That Deliver". The experience of a bank who are using APEX and build up internal expertise. I believe I also saw that presentation at OOW, so I've probably blogged about it before.

After lunch it was our turn. Together with our client we did a presentation about "Power to the People". Rich Mutell did most of the talking and looking at the many questions he got, it seemed he touched a spot. I think he did a wonderful job. Thanks Rich!
Business users will become more powerful. Especially APEX is offering them a medium to get their business done in a fast, secure and scalable way. We also spoke about why they hired us, Apex Evangelists, to help them with the more difficult pieces in APEX, give them support and training or just take them to the next level.

Chris Ostrowski talked about "How IntelliReal used APEX to rapidly build their production environment". All presentations have a common share... everybody likes APEX, because it's RAD. These times everything needs to be delivered asap in less money and less time. Chris also talked about the integration of 3rd Party tools like Google Maps.

Dietmar Aust talked about "Mastering unreasonable deadlines with APEX at German Telecom Shops". What Dietmar had to do in such a short time frame was a challenge. The only way he could deliver was using APEX. He also used 3rd party tools to full fill all needs of the client, like PLFLOW, DHTMLX Tree, a map and geo tools and Graphvis.

Chris Veenstra talked about "How Iron Mountain has used APEX to improve operational abilities within the enterprise". Chris is a dba and used APEX to make his live easier in reporting, verify rman and capacity planning.

After the sessions there was also an APEX Round table with all speakers. The audience could ask questions to us.

At 6 PM there was the Keynote with Tom Kyte: How Do You Know What You Know... He showed a lot of examples from the history where people thought something couldn't be done, but after a few years it was the case. He also talked about being creative. His story about Craig was very nice :-)

After Tom I went to the Welcome Reception. There were a lot of drinks and food and a lot of people to talk to. It was great fun. During the reception people told me they really liked the session of Rich Mutell, our customer Case Study, which I think was great. He did a very good job and are happy to have him as a customer. Together with Rich I went for a walk in New Orleans and had my first hurricane drink. It tasted really good, but due to all the rum in it, you start feeling it very quick ;-)

On the left picture is Rich Mutell and Karen Cannell. On the right it's the famous hurricane place. Oh, and Sunday was also Fathers day in the US. People wished me a happy fathers day as well and I even got a present from Karen Cannell! A famous tie from New Orleans. Thanks Karen!