Wednesday, June 18, 2008

ODTUG08 - Tuesday

The tireness is starting. Although I still get up early, I feel I'm getting tired. On Tuesday I started my day with blogging about Oracle Websheets.

The first session I went to was "You can't do THAT in a browser! Extending Oracle APEX with 3rd party components" by Scott Spendolini. This was version 2 of his presentation. Last year he spook about Ajax select list, Ajax memory tree, plpdf and the fck editor. He did a quick recap of that and included following new things: MS Outlook integration, dhtmlXTree and Fusion Gadgets & Fusion Maps. It was a nice presentation to show how to get "more" in an APEX application.

My second presentation was one of Joel Kallman about "Go Global with Oracle Application Express". I did that presentation also on our European APEX Training Days and when we looked at the feedback forms, it seemed the topic wasn't that popular. I don't really understand why people don't find it important? So also in Joel's session there weren't that many people. But at the same time there was another APEX presentation, which maybe explains the number of people also a bit. I liked his presentation a lot. APEX is very good in going global and he explained the different options in APEX.

In the afternoon I was in the APEX Experts Panel together with Patrick Wolf, John Scott, Karen Cannell, David Peake and Scott Spendolini. The people in the audience asked us questions. The typical questions where there: is APEX scalable? how to compare it with Portal? what about Fusion? etc.

My last two presentations of the day where "Writing a customized Authentication Scheme for APEX" by Raj Mattamal and "Explore and Benefit the APEX repository" by Michiel Jonkers.

Raj showed in his presentation how to create your own little Single Sign On solution in APEX. Having a login application, which links further to other applications, even in different workspaces and databases. Using the cookie was one of his techniques and a bunch of PLSQL code to get it all working. Raj is a very energetic boy, I like his presentation.

Michiel talked about the APEX Repository and how he dealed with that. He went on a journey to figure out what the APEX repository was providing and how to get something out of it. Michiel used some jokes in his presentation which was nice, especially at the end of the day, so it was easier to follow (and stay awake). I must say his presentation was finished before I knew.
He showed the build in screens to show the dictionary views, the views and tables in the database itself and by using the export file you can get more information how APEX does certain things.

I also want to thank the girls of the registration desk. They are such nice people: they need to start very early to make everything ready for the participants, they are always laughing, say hello to me every day... Rich learned me an English word; apparently they are my "groupies". I hope it's not a bad word!

As I blog about the highlights of the day, they let me smile and they let me feel welcome... Here are the nicest girls at ODTUG: Veronica, Lauren and Crystal. Thanks and keep up the good work!


In the evening we had the APEX Meetup. We went with 15 people to a bar to have some drinks and food and watch how the LA Lakers were losing against Boston... Carl wasn't happy with that, but he survived ;-) It was a fun evening with other APEX lovers. Here's the picture

After the food we went back to the hotel and watched the remaining of the game and had some more drinks. When the guys decided to go further, I had to pass as I need to present on Wednesday and Thursday and I'm already tired. I'm curious if I'll see them in my session, they were going to drink some "Grenades", which is even worse than the "Huricane" I had the other day, I was told!

3 comments:

Unknown said...

Hey Dimitri, you shoul put a pictures where Barat , Dan and I can be seen ;)

That was a great get together.

Thanks Dimitri for organizing this !

Anonymous said...

Dimitri,

I really would have enjoyed spending more time with all the APEX lovers! Although, due to circumstances I could not.

I find it entertaining that my co-worker and I refered to you and the other presenters - need I say the names? - as "ROCK STARS" of the APEX world. And then I read you learned a word called - Groupies.

It's "True!" almost, LOL!

Regards,
Michael H.

Anonymous said...

Hi Dimitri,

Can you please share any link about the thing you mentioned "Outlook Integration" with Apex.

Did some search but not able to get how to integrate the events created in apex with Outlook calendar.

It would be really appreciated if you have anything to share.

Regards,
Tauceef