Dimitri Gielis Blog (Oracle Application Express - APEX)

E-Business Suite and APEX installation

2012-01-25T16:05:00.003+01:00

Before doing the integration of Oracle Application Express (APEX) with E-Business Suite (EBs) you need to have both environments installed. The Oracle white paper talks about the installation of APEX, but not about installing E-Business Suite.

The white paper states; the prerequisites for the solution given are:

Oracle E-Business Suite 12.1.3 or above
Oracle E-Business Suite Patch 12316083
Oracle Database 10.2.0.3 or above
Oracle Application Express 3.2 or above

The first thing I needed was an E-Busisness Suite environment. Oracle provides some VM Templates for E-Business Suite 12.1.3. I wanted a complete demo system, like for example the HR schema in the Oracle database or the Sample Application in APEX. The VM Template for E-Business Suite includes the Vision demo.

I never installed EBs before, so I did some research how to do that. Finally I didn't proceed with installing E-Business Suite on our servers, as MCX was happy to provide us with a complete Oracle E-Business Suite 12.1.3 Vision installation on their servers. The version of the underlying Oracle database is 11.2.0.2.0. I also asked them to apply patch 12316083.

APEX needs to be installed on the same Oracle database as the Oracle E- Business suite database server.
We went with installing the latest version of APEX at the moment: APEX 4.1.

Installing APEX is not that hard, basically running some scripts. The only bit you have to be careful with is the choice of web listener. APEX supports three web listeners: mod_plsql, EPG and the APEX Listener.
The mod_plsql gateway is disabled by default by EBs R12, so you shouldn't go with that. The EPG is not recommended either as it will add additional load on the database server, so the best choice would be the APEX Listener. The APEX Listener is the recommended choice in any circumstance anyway, regardless of EBs. (on a related note; I'm giving a presentation about my experiences moving to the APEX Listener at OGh and ODTUG.)

So after installing APEX and using the APEX Listener on an EBs configuration, the architecture looks like this:

So now all the prerequisites are met and we can concentrate on the real integration part in the next post.

Previous related posts:

APEX and E-Business Suite integration

APEX and E-Business Suite integration

2012-01-18T11:39:00.001+01:00

For a couple of years now companies like for example Popay integrate APEX with E-Business Suite.

The learning curve of APEX is not that high, so people with a (technical) E-Business Suite background should be up and running in no time.

In April 2011, Oracle released a whitepaper how to Extending Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12 using Oracle Application Express. Before, although it worked, you were a bit on your own incase you had issues, with the whitepaper things changed, so now you can call Oracle support as well.

In the next days I will share my experiences trying to get up-to-speed with integrating APEX with Oracle E-Business Suite. My background with Oracle E-Business Suite is limited, but I know a lot about APEX and that whitepaper should get me a big step further in integrating with E-Business Suite.

On the 15th of February, the APEX and E-Business Suite SIGs of OBUG (Oracle Benelux User Group) hold a half day (FREE) seminar about this integration too. So if you want to see this integration live or you want to hear from companies who are successful in it, come and join us. You find the agenda below:

SQL Developer Application Express Reports

2011-12-19T22:47:00.002+01:00

There are some useful reports in SQL Developer that give you an insight in your APEX applications.

Click on the Reports tab in SQL Developer and open the Application Express folder. There are many reports, for example the Application Statistics you see below.

In the first grid you see all the applications of your workspace (linked to the schema you are logged in as). If you click on an application, the detail tabs load.

Below you see another report - Workspace > Activity Summary

In APEX you have a lot of statistics about your application too (see below screenshot of the Monitor Activity screen).

If you want to navigate across applications, the SQL Developer reports are really useful as it's very fast to navigate. Both APEX as SQL Developer have their strengths. If you can't find the information you need, you can also write a query yourselves based on the APEX dictionary.

APEX-Challenge.com statistics November

2011-11-29T10:48:00.006+01:00

Below you find some statistics of the APEX-Challenge for November. If you want to make fun and play the APEX Challenge too, you can register (or login) here.

Summary for Oracle Application Express Weekly APEX Quiz

Played between 5 November 2011 and 12 November 2011
Total # of players: 149
Total # of answers submitted: 149
100% correct submissions: 8
Average % correct: 60

5 November 2011: Leverage the APEX data dictionary views to answer questions about your application.
166 Players ♦ Avg. Correct: 60% ♦ Avg. Time: 202 seconds ♦ Rating: 4 stars

Summary for Oracle Application Express Weekly APEX Quiz

Played between 12 November 2011 and 19 November 2011
Total # of players: 142
Total # of answers submitted: 142
100% correct submissions: 15
Average % correct: 56

12 November 2011: The question shows how to correctly pass values using page items within branches and some of the limitations.
156 Players ♦ Avg. Correct: 57% ♦ Avg. Time: 129 seconds ♦ Rating: 4 stars

Summary for Oracle Application Express Weekly APEX Quiz

Played between 19 November 2011 and 26 November 2011
Total # of players: 141
Total # of answers submitted: 141
100% correct submissions: 33
Average % correct: 76

19 November 2011: To be aware of the functions and procedures contained in the APEX_UTIL package and other APEX Packages
145 Players ♦ Avg. Correct: 76% ♦ Avg. Time: 131 seconds ♦ Rating: 4 stars

If you want to see more questions, you find the library of previous questions and answers here.

APEX-Challenge.com

2011-10-17T20:14:00.003+02:00

A few months ago we (APEX Evangelists) launched the APEX Challenge, a weekly quiz where you get a question about Oracle Application Express. Next to the fun of answering the questions and see your rank, you will hopefully learn something.

To make it a bit easier for the APEX community, to find the site, we looked at a specific url for the APEX Challenge.

Before you always had to go to the PL/SQL Challenge and take the APEX quiz from there, which you can still do, but now we enabled http://www.apex-challenge.com too.

We also have the apexquiz.com domain, so my question now is: which domain do you like most?

stay at plsqlchallenge.com
go to apex-challenge.com
go to apexquiz.com

Tell us what you like... In a few weeks we will redirect the domain permanently.

If you have suggestions to make the APEX challenge/quiz better, please share with us too.

Thanks so much.

OBUG Benelux Connect 2012

2011-10-17T13:32:00.000+02:00

On April 24, 2012 the Oracle Benelux User Group (OBUG) is organizing for the 5th time in succession, and in close collaboration with Oracle, OBUG Benelux Connect.

Possibly you attended in the past and you wish to present your customer case at the upcoming OBUG Benelux Connect 2012 conference. OBUG offers you the ultimate possibility to share your personal experience with other Oracle customers within the Benelux.

OBUG Benelux 2012 will be held at the MECC in Maastricht, the Netherlands. This is an excellent venue that provides its guests with the very latest amenities in a strikingly professional ambiance. The MECC is located in Maastricht, 10 minutes from Maastricht Central Station with train connections to Amsterdam and Brussels and a 3 minute walk from the train station Maastricht-Randwyck. Maastricht is a very popular destination for congress visitors, because it is such an intimate place and the city has much to offer.

“Extend your Horizon”

Extend your Horizon is the theme for OBUG Benelux Connect 2012.

The strength of OBUG Benelux Connect is the customer cases presented by our members and other Oracle customers: Learn from peers to maximize the value of your business-critical applications and technology. In over 40 sessions, speakers will share their experiences and business solutions with delegates in different streams, which gives them the possibility to investigate other products, extending their horizon. There are streams for Applications (Oracle eBS, Peoplesoft, Siebel, JD Edwards, Primavera), Technology (DBMS, JDeveloper/ADF, APEX, ...), Middleware (BPEL, SOA, EAS, ...) and Intelligence (Hyperion, OBI, GRC, ...).

The crowning touch is that the Oracle user experience team will fly in from the USA again to conduct several onsite User Experience Sessions, where delegates have the ability to contribute to and influence product direction and design for Oracle’s next-generation products.

CALL FOR PRESENTATIONS

OBUG is looking for end-users, project leaders, implementers, IT and functional managers, CIO's to share their experience with Oracle products in a 45-minute presentation – (slides in English, presentations preferably in English).

If you can make a valuable contribution to the success of our conference, please complete the online submission form on the OBUG website before December 9th, 2011.

If you have any questions, please contact Chris Coolen, Executive Director Oracle Benelux User Group, as soon as possible by e-mail or by phone +31620677597.

The organization will make a selection from all contributions based on main criteria such as quality and diversity. Also membership of the OBUG, user or partner, will be taken into account.

Speakers will receive a notification of our decision in week 2, 2012.

Hope to see you there.

Vote for Martin @ODTUG board

2011-10-17T09:47:00.005+02:00

Last Oracle Open World Martin (Giffy D'Souza, left on the picture) told me he was running for the ODTUG board and without a doubt, I told him I would support him.

I know Martin for some time now; we first met in 2008 when we did a project for the company he worked for at that time. From the very first moment I appreciated his personality and technical skills. Over the years Martin became more active in the APEX community; on his blog he shares his experiences, he helps people in the forum and presents at different Oracle conferences.

In the beginning of the year I nominated him to become an Oracle ACE which was accepted. He not only got that recognition, he also got the best presentation award at ODTUG's conference this year. Hopefully 2011 will bring him one more award... a place in the ODTUG board.

I hope the whole APEX community shares my feelings when I say: "Vote for Martin and get him in the board!". Being APEX as one of the main tracks at ODTUG I think it only makes sense to have an APEX representative in the board and I can't think of a better person than Martin. His personality makes the difference!

You can read more about Martin's campaign and his reasons running for the board on his blog.

All the best Martin! I hope you make it.

APEX Meet-up OOW 2011

2011-10-10T13:42:00.004+02:00

On Tuesday we had our 6th APEX Meet-up at Oracle Open World (OOW).

It was another great time to have some fun and chats with other people developing and using Oracle Application Express applications.

This is just one of the picture, you find more pictures here.

As there were so many people we didn't have one picture with all of us. Some also came in later... it started with grabbing two tables, but at the end we filled half of the bar :-)

If you were at the APEX Meet-up and have some other pictures, please send them to me and I'll add them to the album.

Special thanks to OTN, ODTUG and the APEX Development team to sponsor the meet-up. Although we were with many people, the costs for drinks and appetisers where covered by the sponsorship! Thanks again.

APEX in the Cloud

2011-10-06T02:59:00.005+02:00

With today's announcement of the Oracle Database Cloud, it also means Oracle gives a strong message towards the APEX community.

Oracle Application Express (APEX) will be included in the Database Cloud. If you look at the features of the Database Cloud, for development it's all APEX and web services (through the APEX listener).

Before we had (and still have) apex.oracle.com where you could try APEX for free, but couldn't install any production applications on it. Now with the Oracle Database Cloud you have a paid alternative for all production applications. You can obviously use it for development and test too.

The other interesting thing is that there are productivity apps available... it's some kind of an APEX app place which you can install for free.

It looks like in the future also partners can offer their apps on there.

Probably in the next days and weeks we hear more about all the Oracle cloud... one piece that is missing it looks like is pricing.

Live from the OOW11 Keynote

2011-10-05T23:37:00.010+02:00

I'm writing this post while the keynote is going on... I'll update this post while we go on.

This will be a special keynote for ... :-) You can also follow me on twitter.

15 mins before the start, room is now filling up quickly

Mark Hurt on stage announcing Infosys, Larry comes later... won't blog much about Infosys, waiting for Larry.

Sting came on stage to tell he looks forward to sing for us at the Appreciation event later today.

There you go, Larry comes on stage... now it will start to be interesting.

Fusion Applications run in the cloud and on-premise. Important, cloud security: separate VM & database for each customer (no multi-tenancy). Larry mentions APEX for the first time; people use it in the cloud to build custom applications, some people use it to extend Fusion Apps (or e-business suite).

Larry announcing the Oracle Public Cloud

Key difference with other clouds, Oracle Cloud build on standards, can link to anything.

Different services, first to start with Database Server Cloud... (screenshot is not ideal, but there is a first screenshot of APEX)

Great jokes of Larry about "False Clouds". Something like "you check data in, but you can't check it out!", "you take the plane and are in the clouds, but can't get out the plane/cloud anymore".

Larry is in great shape ;-)

Hacking a lot on Salesforce.com... now Larry is comparing the Oracle cloud vs others (false clouds).

Larry announcing the Oracle Social Network

Larry shows a "live" demo of the Oracle Fusion Applications together with the Oracle Social Networking. The demo lasts a bit long, but it is nice to see all the nice features in Fusion Apps.

*** sad news coming in *** Steve Jobs of Apple passed away ...

Demo done, show over... seems like a strange end to the keynote.

Not sure it was intended like that or it had to do with the news of Steve Jobs. They say Larry is a good friend of Steve Jobs...

So no pricing, no demo of the database cloud... Rumours where different... Database in the cloud = APEX in the cloud. The Oracle cloud is live now, you can find it at http://cloud.oracle.com

What you see is also an APEX app...

I guess the presentations tomorrow will go in more debt about the Oracle Database Cloud.

Press (and bloggers) got an invite to a 5PM meeting to Cloud Technical Deep Dive... not sure I'll go there.

Downloading Oracle software from linux server with wget

2011-09-22T23:43:00.006+02:00

When I need to install software on a linux server, I locate all the software I need and start downloading it.

Downloading it first to your laptop and moving it then to the server is one option, which works ok if you are on the same network as the server. However with having a lot in the cloud it would be far easier to download the software directly on the server (as the server is already connected to the internet).

If I was running a graphical interface on the server, which I'm not, I could have used a browser. I could also have used lynx, a text based browser. My experience with lynx isn't that great, for example when I had to login and the site used javascript things got messed up or were not working. Probably I did something wrong or didn't have enough experience using it.

The way I download for example Oracle software straight into the server is by using wget.

As you can only download Oracle software after you are logged in, I had to do an additional step to get wget working.

These are the steps I followed:

- Open Firefox and install the Expert Cookies add-on. That tool allows you to download the cookies of your pc into a text file.

- Clear all cookies (Tools - Clear Recent History... - Select Cookies and click the Clear now button)

- In your browser on your pc login to the Oracle website and/or depending the software you need on edelivery.oracle.com. Logging in will set a cookie.

- With the Expert Cookies add-on you can now download the cookies of your pc (Tools - Export Cookies ...) and save the file to your filesystem

- Upload that file to your server

- Now you can run the wget command from the server to download the software you want :-)

For example to download Apache the command looks like:

wget --load-cookies=cookies.txt http://download.oracle.com/otn/linux/ias/101350/ias_linux_x86_ccd_101350_disk1_1of3.zip

Updates on APEXBlogs

2011-09-21T21:34:00.002+02:00

Some of you might have seen that APEXBlogs wasn't updated with twitter messages anymore for some time. Since last week blog posts were not taken anymore either.

I only found a little time today to look a bit closer into these issues and am happy to share with you what is going on.

The reason for not updating the blog posts was that my package produced this error:

ORA-31011: XML parsing failed
ORA-19202: Error occurred in XML processing
LPX-00217: invalid character 160 (U+00A0)
Error at line 1

Although the Oracle database is running in UTF-8 and Google is sending the posts as UTF-8, it looks like it's not doing that with the blog names. The name "JoÃ£o Oliveira" has some bad characters which Oracle didn't understand. After changing this name in Google Reader the procedure didn't produce the error anymore and Oracle could parse the xml again.

Concerning twitter... that is a different story. It looks like the APEXBlogs is banned to use the Twitter API. As I didn't take out the twitter api calls from the hourly sync, we stayed banned and it got worse I guess.

Although I thought I followed the guidelines of using the API, I'll change the syncing of twitter message to do it less frequently so we aren't blacklisted again in the future. The syncing worked for many months, so Twitter must have changed their policies.

Today I asked Twitter to remove APEXBlogs.info from the blacklist so hopefully the twitter syncing will work again in a few days.

APEX Meetup @ OOW 2011

2011-09-14T15:14:00.006+02:00

It's an annual tradition that the APEX developers get together at Oracle Open World to have some drinks and meet each other and tell great stories.

This year it's the 5th year we do this! (update: 6th year!) The first APEX Meetup was in 2006, this is the picture that was taken at that time.

You recognise the people? It's funny to see that picture again, it shows how fast life goes and that we don't stay young ;-)

Where in 2006 APEX had still everything to proof, the stories were about "will APEX stay?" and "how can I convince my manager/customer that APEX is really good?"... now, APEX has proven it's value many times and almost every customer using Oracle knows about it or uses APEX. Things change... and the life of APEX isn't over yet... there is more to come.

So what about the meet up this year?

As the tradition wants, the APEX Meetup will be at the 4th Street Bar & Deli on the Tuesday (7.30 PM) during Oracle Open World. Everybody is welcome! OTN (thanks Lillian!) is sponsoring this year again too, so the first round is already paid for :-)

Hope to see you there...

Upgraded to APEX 4.1 successfully

2011-08-25T14:54:00.004+02:00

Yesterday APEX 4.1 hit production and is now available for everybody to download.

Joel Kallman of the APEX development team did a nice post about this new release here.

He not only mentions some of the new features that come with APEX 4.1, but also explains that jQuery Mobile will come shortly after this release.

I played with the Early Adopter release of APEX 4.1 for some time and liked it very much. I also tried some of my applications and they ran without that many issues. You might want to read on the changed behaviour documentation of APEX 4.1 first.

As the production release is now available, I upgraded one of my APEX 4.0 instance to APEX 4.1 without any issues today (if you need to rerun the ACL privileges, read this). It took less than 15 minutes to do that.

I don't tend to wait too long before I upgrade to the latest release of APEX as with every release you get so many more enhancements and new features, it makes it really worthwhile.

I like the new UI of the Builder very much too and look forward to use APEX 4.1 day in and day out.

Google Apps desupport "old" browsers

2011-06-21T00:11:00.003+02:00

I just get an email of Google which was interesting to say the least... and I wish I could tell the people we develop Oracle APEX apps for the same! Developing web applications that are browser compliant (especially older browsers) is just taking so much time! It would be really nice if it was common to only need to support the last 3 versions.

Here is the email:

Beginning on August 1, 2011, Google Apps support for the following browsers versions will be DISCONTINUED:

- Microsoft Internet Explorer 7
- Mozilla Firefox 3.5
- Apple Safari 3

After August 1, you may have trouble using certain features in Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Talk, Google Docs and Google Sites with these older browsers, and eventually these apps may stop working entirely.

WHY THE CHANGE?
To give users the best experience with Google Apps, we need the capabilities of modern browsers to deliver features such as desktop notifications for Gmail and drag-and-drop file upload in Google Docs.

For this reason, beginning August 1, 2011, Google Apps will support the current and previous major releases of Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer and Safari on a rolling basis. Each time a new version is released, we’ll begin supporting that version and stop supporting the third-oldest version.

I couldn't agree more ;-)

Ready for the Weekly APEX QUIZ?

2011-06-17T16:03:00.006+02:00

With the growing popularity and usage of Oracle Application Express, we are very excited to announce a new weekly Oracle APEX quiz launching on Saturday, 18th June. Weekly quizzes start on Saturday and end on Friday at midnight (UTC).

We have been deeply involved in the development (and success!) of the PL/SQL Challenge from the very beginning... and we have now taken the next logical step:

APEX Evangelists is now sponsoring a weekly APEX quiz, so you can now look forward to APEX Evangelists challenging you with some interesting quizzes. If you’re already a seasoned APEX developer or you are only just beginning your journey with APEX, then this is the perfect time to start competing in the APEX Quiz to help to deepen and broaden your knowledge about one of Oracle’s most exciting application development tools.

To play the APEX quiz starting 18 June, simply visit http://www.plsqlchallenge.com and choose the quiz in the Play a Quiz table. We also encourage you to submit your own ideas for APEX quizzes – and to volunteer as a reviewer (which you can do through the Feedback page).

We made a bet with Steven Feuerstein that more developers will be playing the APEX quiz than the daily PL/SQL quiz in no time! So help us spread the word! Let your friends co-workers know about the APEX quiz and start playing now!

APEX 4.1 EA2 available: drag/drop calendar, data load

2011-06-11T07:21:00.006+02:00

The Oracle Application Express (APEX) development team hit the ball out the park again with some of the new features you find in APEX 4.1 Early Adopter 2!

tryapexnow.com got updated last night with a new version of APEX and I just played a little bit with it. Two new features caught my eye: the data load wizard and the drag/drop in the calendar.

Drag/Drop in Calendar

I followed the wizard to create a new page of type Calendar and it now asks if you want to enable Drag and Drop.

The drag and drop features uses an On Demand Page Process which you have to select in the Calendar Attributes. If you click on the Process label you see an example how such a Process needs to look like.

Data Loading Pages (wizard)

You want to allow people to upload data in your application (using copy/paste or a csv file)? Now you just have to follow the Data Loading wizard and it does everything for you. It even includes a mechanism that detects if it needs to do an update or an insert, it allows you to add data transformations and validations and it just flows well.

When you finish the wizard the page in you application looks like this

Many features that come with this wizard, really nice. And it's just an APEX page, so you can still customise it like you want.

If you didn't try APEX 4.1 yet, give it a go, it's worth to see what's coming... and remember to use the Feedback link to give the APEX development team feedback.

APEX rocks wallpaper

2011-05-22T07:57:00.005+02:00

If you like to have a special wallpaper on your Desktop, Galaxy tablet, iPad or iPhone you can check out the APEX rocks wallpapers.

Red Gate created in conjunction with APEX Evangelists the APEX Rocks set especially for the APEX community. There are other sets available from the Red Gate website.

The APEX Rocks set wallpapers can be downloaded from APEXBlogs. On the right hand side under Useful Tools you find the link.

APEX 4.1 - Chart improvements

2011-05-17T11:59:00.001+02:00

Although they are not specifically listed in the New Features overview, Oracle APEX 4.1 seems to include some charts enhancements and bug fixes.

Here's an overview of the improvements I found on 4.1.0.00.03 compared to 4.0.2.00.07.

1) Although the Font Settings was there in APEX 4.0, there was not a region display selector for it. That got added now.

2) In the Font Settings the Grid Label was removed. This setting was a carry over of APEX 3.x but became obsolete in APEX 4.0 (more info in this blog post's comment).

3) The Marker select list only becomes visible for Line and Pie charts, for other chart types the marker disappeared. (more info in this blog post's comment)

4) Two new features for Bar and Column charts: Overlay Y-Axis and Sorted Overlay Y-Axis which allows to see the Series behind each other instead of next to each other.

Normal behaviour of a 3D Column chart with three series.

If the Overlay Y-Axis is checked the Series go behind each other.

The Sorted Overlay Y-Axis is especially useful in a 2D Column chart, as if you wouldn't do it one column/bar might be over the other one and you wouldn't see it. If it's sorted the smallest are in front and the biggest columns are at the back. In the above example the green (Womens Series) is behind the red (Mens Series), but as they are a bit transparent and 3D you still see it. If you prefer to see it better you should use the Sorted Overlay Y-Axis too.

5) The overall feel of the Application Builder was improved in APEX 4.1. The Axes Settings for example now disable some fields depending other selections on the page. Also only the features that are useful for the chart you selected should be visible.

6) Issues from APEX 4.0 seem to be all resolved in APEX 4.1: Build Query button, Axes, Gradient, Multiple Series

7) You can now position the label of a Pie or Doughnut chart to be either outside (default) or inside. Lengthy labels made the size of the chart smaller as the label was on the outside. If you put your label on the inside you don't have this anymore.

The chart with the Label Position to Outside:

The chart with the Label Position to Inside:

It's these small tweaks that make APEX even better than it was before and makes it a great development environment.

APEX 4.1 and more

2011-05-16T12:17:00.005+02:00

10 days ago the APEX Development team announced an early adopter version of APEX 4.1.

A (bigger) release of a new version of APEX happened in the past in three steps:

1) Beta (Early Adopter) on tryapexnow.com (possibly with some refreshes)

2) Upgrade of apex.oracle.com

3) Download new version of APEX on OTN

Depending the feedback the time between the steps might vary and sometimes some unexpected things pop-up, but I would expect the release of APEX 4.1 around the summer holidays. (note; this is just my personal guess!)

Although APEX 4.1 is not as big of a release as 4.0 was, it will definitely be worthwhile to upgrade once it becomes available. A list of the new features you find here.

All improvements and new features are very useful and make a lot of sense, but if I had to list my top 4 at this stage, these would be:

- Nicer and updated look and feel of the Application Builder: flow got improved, new icons, bug fixes ...

- Tabular Form improvements: validations, processes ...

- Plug-Ins improvements: authorization schemes, increased number of attributes ...

- Better Error Handling feature

I've seen a demo of the upcoming Mobile Support before and if that was already in this build of APEX 4.1 it would have been in my top list as well. Another powerful feature mentioned in the SOD will be Data Upload, that enables end-users to upload data into an existing table.

One feature that was rumoured to be in APEX 4.1, but seems not to have made it in time, is non-flash charts. (on a side note; I don't mind that, as we (APEX Evangelists) offer a non-flash chart plugin for APEX :-)).

Definitely give APEX 4.1 a try yourself and give as much feedback as possible to the APEX Development team (from the APP Builder there is a link to the Feedback app).

If you want to read more about the new Error Handling features in APEX, Patrick Wolf did two blog posts which give more detail: part 1 and part 2.

If you are interested in reading about the new Authorization scheme plugin, check out the post of Christian Neumueller, another member of the APEX Development team who started to blog recently.

OBUG APEX SIG - May 24th, Belgium

2011-05-02T09:47:00.002+02:00

Oracle and OBUG APEX SIG are glad to invite you to a free full day APEX seminar. The agenda has been completely filled and we have some of the most recognized APEX people presenting!

View the full Agenda and Register

Reminder - FREE Webinar Wednesday - How APEXBlogs was built

2011-04-02T20:05:00.003+02:00

Just a quick reminder that I'm doing a FREE Webinar on Wednesday how the new APEXBlogs website was built.

I'll start with what I didn't like about the old APEXBlogs site and why I wanted to do the redesign of back-end and front-end. Next I'll go over the development process and how things work behind the scenes. I'll conclude with the deployment which includes going from our server in the datacenter to our server in the cloud (Amazon). You'll also have the chance to ask me questions about this project and APEX in general.

Currently there are over 200 people registered... if you want to join us register here.

If you can't make it, but liked to have seen it... register too. The webinar gets recorded and the link will be sent to all registered people, so you can still see it whenever suits you.

New APEX Book - Expert Oracle Application Express

2011-03-30T23:44:00.003+02:00

Soon a new Oracle Application Express (APEX) book will be available... and it will be one you definitely want to have!

John Scott came up with the idea to do a special APEX book in memory of our passed away friends Carl Backstrom and Scott Spadafore, two members of the APEX Development team. John gives more details on his blog, so definitely read that too.

Next to the emotional value of the book, the content is unique and is not found anywhere else!

Thirteen different chapters, written by thirteen of the worlds best known Oracle APEX experts! The names are: Dietmar Aust, Doug Gault, Dimitri Gielis (myself), Roel Hartman, Michael Hichwa, Sharon Kennedy, Denes Kubicek, Francis Mignault, Anton Nielsen, Raj Mattamal, Daniel McGhan, John Scott and Martin D’Souza.

We all had one mission: share our passion, pass on all our knowledge, give you content you don't find anywhere else and go that extra mile to make this book, *the* APEX book.

Personal Experience with Writing

Although I already wrote articles before and was a technical reviewer on other APEX books, it was the first time I actually wrote a complete chapter for a book. It was quite an experience to say the least... I did enjoy the writing and even more focussing on the technical side of things and doing the research and testing etc. but I didn't realise it would take up so much time. Therefor I would like to thank my wife, my kids and my family for their support and to give me that time during the weekends and evenings.

Also special thanks to Hilary Farrell from the APEX Development team to review my chapter, even with her own tight deadlines.

About My Chapter

There wasn't a real rule about which topic which author took, but it all kinda spook for itself. I guess if you look at the names, you probably know that Anton wrote about security, Dan about Plugins, Francis about Globalization, ... I don't want to give all topics away yet... I'm sure the other authors will tell you soon :-)

The title of my chapter is "APEX 4.0 Charts Inside Out"... and there is a lot to tell about these charts! Apress (the publisher) told me to stop when I hit 80 pages, otherwise I think I was still writing! When you are passionate about something...

I hope that after reading my chapter you really understand how charts work, what they can give you and how you can create any chart you like. And remember... start to include charts in your APEX application (if you are not already doing) as they might trigger your manager to give you a salary increase! Managers love visuals!

Here are the sections of the chapter:

Overview	2
HTML Charts	2
Using the HTML Charts Wizard	2
The Result	3
Debug and Performance	4
Behind the Scenes	4
Other Opportunities linked to HTML Charts	5
Flash Charts	8
Background Flash Charts	8
Creating a Flash Chart	8
The Result	14
Understanding the Chart Region	16
Understanding the Chart Attributes	19
Adding Multiple Series and Combined Charts	28
Different Flash Chart Types	33
Behind the Scenes	35
Debug and Performance	40
Upgrading Oracle APEX 3.x Flash and SVG Charts	44
Screen Reader Mode and Charts	46
Extending Flash Charts	48
Customizing Charts by using Custom XML	48
Customizing Charts by using Custom XML, Dynamic Actions and JavaScript	51
Creating Charts Manually	54
Drill-down Charts, Dashboards and Interactivity	60
Simple Dashboard with Submit	60
Simple Dashboard with JavaScript	63
Complex Dashboard with Actions	67
Most Common Issues	76
Specific feature	76
Invalid #HOST# with Reverse Proxy or HTTPS	76
Flash Security Error	77
Charts in the Future	77
Caution	78
Resources	79
Summary	80

Hope you like the above!

The topics that didn't make it into the chapter were some more examples of the most asked requests in the APEX Forum and all the information about Gantt charts and Maps.

The way of working of Gantts and Maps are very similar to the "normal" charts, they just use a different Flash file and XML. But normally by the time you finish this chapter, you'll be able to answer all your questions you have yourself.

It might be that I'll publish an ebook about Gantts and Maps later in the year if I see many people would benefit from it.

AND NOW... (PRE-)ORDER THE BOOK! :-)

Last day Early bird Registration ODTUG Kscope11

2011-03-25T08:45:00.006+01:00

Just a quick reminder to everybody who wants to go to ODTUG Kscope11 and didn't register yet... do it today! You can save 300 USD today as it's the last day for early bird registration.

If you are reading this post after Friday, 25th of March... use "APEX" as the discount code and you get 100 USD off.

If you want to know what I find about the conference... read this post where Mike Riley, president of ODTUG, interviewed me. The post includes also tips for sight seeing, food and shopping!

See you there...

Oracle APEX 4.0 Cookbook

2011-03-17T11:19:00.003+01:00

I just wanted to share there is another Oracle Application Express book out called Oracle APEX 4.0 Cookbook (released in December 2010).

The book is different from other APEX books around, in that respect that the two authors, Michel van Zoest and Marcel van der Plas, describe a problem and then explain how to solve it. There is actually a sample chapter free to download that shows how you create a multilingual APEX application. It gives a good idea how the other chapters were done.

I was actually one of the reviewers while they were writing the book. I started to go through their chapters at the end of May 2010.

I liked doing the reviews as it was interesting to see how they described how they would do something. I also like they added a section after every "cooking session", how it works. I do think it's important you know what is happening. Just to set expectations for people wanting the nitty-gritty details, Michel and Marcel didn't go into that much detail in describing how things work behind the scenes, but they scratch the surface so it gives you an idea.

I think the book definitely has an audience. People who followed a beginner training or learned APEX at their own and they want to know how to do a specific thing which is covered in the book, it's great to have the book, as you can just follow what the authors wrote and you also have an idea why it's done like that.

I have much appreciation for people who are dedicating their times to write a book. Most of the times the writing happens next to their regular jobs and I can guarantee the sentences don't come by themselves especially not for non-native English speaking persons.

Well done guys.

Non-Flash Charts for APEX - Released today!

2011-03-15T15:50:00.005+01:00

It's with great honour APEX Evangelists is announcing today that Non-Flash Charts APEX Plugin (or in short: NFChart) is publicly available.

If you need great looking charts that run everywhere, including iPad, iPhone, iPod or just any device that doesn't have a Flash player/plugin, this product is definitely something you want!

NFCharts is very easy to use, it's just an Oracle APEX Plugin, so after installing this plugin it behaves as a native region. The plugin comes with a sample application so it's super easy to get started and have examples to your disposal.

Just as with the charts that are in APEX we have plugin text-items which you fill in and the chart will behave like that. If you need more we allow to customise anything you like!

And that is not all... we have a special launch offer too! If you order NFChart by 18-MAR-2011 you get a nice discount! The discount codes are SAVE75, SAVE100, SAVE150 depending the license type you go with.

Check it out now!

Get most out of your Charts in APEX

2011-03-11T13:50:00.008+01:00

Who doesn't love charts? I still have to see these persons... in fact I know some developers who got a salary raise because they made the life of their manager easy by including some nice charts in their APEX applications! So read on and get your salary raise in the next months!

APEX 3.0 included already charts way back in 2007, but with the APEX 4.0 release, the charts are taken to another level. Behind the scenes the APEX Development team included the AnyChart 5 engine where before (in APEX 3.x) they used the AnyChart 3 engine.
In APEX 4.0, charts are just on another level! You get so many more options declarative (through the APEX screens) and they look so much nicer. The APEX-team did a really good job. They also allow you to extend the charts for any other feature that is not available declarative by customizing the XML (in Chart Attributes set Use Custom XML to Yes).

If you wonder what the new AnyChart 5 charting engine can do, have a look at the Chart Gallery.
If you are searching for example how to implement these and see some of them in action in APEX, you can have a look at Hilary Farrell examples page. She explains nicely all the steps you have to do to implement a certain feature. You can also have a look for other examples on the AnyChart for APEX website.

If that is not enough to get your salary raise... you definitely want to have a look at all the other chart types AnyChart 5 provides! Oracle didn't license all the chart types in APEX, so although you might be able to change the XML so it uses a different type, it's not licensed correctly.
That is why APEX Evangelists and AnyChart worked together on AnyChart for APEX, which provides you with a valid license to use any chart type you want. There are now two versions available: AnyChart for APEX 3.x and AnyChart for APEX 4.0. The last one includes some plugins to make your life even easier! E.g. it comes with a Bubble Chart plugin so you can include that chart type very easily. You can download a free trial on the APEX Evangelists website once you are logged in.

Another great product from AnyChart is AnyStock. Also for this new charting engine we worked together with AnyChart to create an AnyStock for APEX product. If you want to do Time-based or Financial-based charting, you definitely want to have a look at the demo. Also for this product we offer a free trial on the APEX Evangelists website under Solutions > AnyStock for APEX.

So start making use from the charting capability in APEX or you might already do, so then you can enhance it even nicer ... and if you get that raise, put a comment on this blog post!

APEXBlogs v2 - iPad compatible, even charts!

2011-03-09T23:43:00.000+01:00

It's very exciting to announce the new APEXBlogs site is now iPad compatible!

I find it so cool! Now you can look at the latest news on APEX everywhere.

Following enhancements where made to make the site iPad compatible:

If you navigate to apexblogs.info and you tab the + to add it to your Home Screen on the iPad, it gets a proper icon.
APEXBlogs is optimised to run in Landscape mode (iPad rotated left or right), if it's not then a popup message will appear to tell you, it looks even better if you turn the screen.
The other exciting enhancement is that you will see also charts now! As the iPad doesn't support to run Flash, we included NFCharts, the Non-Flash Charts APEX Plugin created by APEX Evangelists. If you are on your PC you still see the Flash Charts as there is only a redirect when there is an iPad/iPhone/iPod found. If you want to see the non-Flash charts also on your pc, go here. Look pretty similar no? I love our plugin and it will become available for sale very soon. Keep an eye on John Scott's blog as well as he will do more posts about NFCharts in the coming days too.

To get the site working nicely with the iPad, this website gave me good tips.

Hopefully some people can give it a try on their iPad. I know quiet a lot of people in the APEX community have one, so look forward what you think of it.

Call to the APEX Community - APEX Enhancement Requests

2011-03-09T12:55:00.006+01:00

Looking at the statistics of the new version of APEXBlogs shows the "Knowledge Base" is not used that much yet. I really expected that would become one of *the* features what people would come back for.

We all enjoy working with Oracle Application Express (APEX), but it can always be better and for sure you thought at least once "I wish I had that feature in"... so why not register it straight on APEXBlogs? Just login to the site and Submit your Enhancement Request.

If you can't think of a new feature yourself, just go there and have a look what other people wished was in. You can then rate these features and give your feedback/comments on it.

I see a benefit to not only use it for Enhancements Requests, but also for bugs, or things you thought worked in a certain way, but didn't. It's always hard to know if something is implemented the way it works, but you expected something else, or a real bug.

Often the APEX Development team comment on the Forum, Blog Posts etc where they say this is bug 12345678 (which is not a My Oracle Support number) and it will be fixed in the next release. Or they reply, it's intended to work like this, but we might consider to allow ... in the next version or it will be implemented in APEX 4.1.

I really love to just be able to go to one place and find everything in there... so I count on all of you to make APEX even better than it is and by submitting through APEX Blogs we provide a single voice to the APEX Development team which will help them to see what is really important for all of us.

Thanks so much! I look forward to the first entry and comments in APEXBlogs :-)

New APEX Evangelists website online

2011-03-08T13:58:00.004+01:00

Our new APEX Evangelists website is online now...

You can also follow us on twitter @apexevangelists

We have been working hard on our Solutions and hope you like them... I'll do some more blog posts about them in the next days. So stay tuned :-)

Free Webinar - APEXBlogs v2 behind the scenes

2011-03-07T08:06:00.000+01:00

My friends at Red Gate asked me if I would be interested to do a Webinar about the development process of the creation of the new APEXBlogs site and give some insights what's going on behind the scenes.

I happily accepted and the Webinar is now scheduled for April 6th - 4:00PM - 5:00PM GMT. (that is 6PM Belgium time)

I'll start with what I didn't like about the old APEXBlogs site and why I wanted to do the redesign of back-end and front-end. Next I'll go over development and some specific features I put in to conclude with the deployment. You'll also have the chance to ask me questions about this project and APEX in general.

Everybody is welcome to join this Free Webinar. Just go to the registration url and enter your details and you will receive the login details. All registrants will also be sent a link to the recording after the live event.

If you are interested, speak you then ...

APEXBlogs (v2) - EA Live!

2011-03-05T02:14:00.005+01:00

I just put APEXBlogs (v2) EA (Early Adopter) online...

Goal is to gather as much feedback as possible! Any issues, remarks or just your thoughts please use this blog post to add them or use the Feedback button on the APEXBlogs site itself.

Known Issues:

Internet Explorer 7 and lower compatibility: the search is not aligned like in other browsers
iPad resize on Home Page gives white band on right hand side
Charts in Statistics and APEX Usage won't load on the iPad/iPhone

Goal is to have most issues ironed out for the beginning of next week. I'll do some more blog postings in the next days with some more background about this site.

So go quickly to the new APEXBlogs site and try it out! Hope you like it.

APEXBlogs v2 - Search

2011-03-02T16:12:00.006+01:00

This post is part of the 10 days of APEXBlogs. This series of blog posts highlight the features of the new version (APEXBlogs v2) of APEXBlogs.info which will be released shortly.

Post 10... the last post before the launch of the new APEXBlogs!

In April last year I already blogged about the nice search in APEX 4, but wouldn't it be nice to have such functionality in APEXBlogs too?

I didn't think it would be interesting to do the number search to go straight to an App and Page, but typing in a text and getting all the results throughout the application is a nice timesaver.

(the screenshot is from APEX itself, you will see the one in APEXBlogs when it launches...)

So that is exactly what I build in APEXBlogs. You type in a text and it will retrieve all the blog posts, tweets, plugins etc where the search string appears in.

If you want to create such a search in your application yourself, here are the steps to do that:

Create a Page and give it an Alias of SEARCH
Create an Interactive Report Region on that page based on the tables and columns you want to search in
Create a Region with an Item called P0_SEARCH on Page 0
Create a Dynamic Action on Page 0:
- Event: Key Release
- Item: P0_SEARCH
- True Action: Execute Javascript Code:
if(this.browserEvent.keyCode == 13) {
window.location = 'f?p=&APP_ID.:SEARCH:&APP_SESSION.:::RIR:IR_ROWFILTER:'+$v('P0_SEARCH');
}

That's it... you will have an amazing search in your application now.

APEXBlogs v2 - Knowledge Base

2011-03-01T23:51:00.004+01:00

This post is part of the 10 days of APEXBlogs. This series of blog posts highlight the features of the new version (APEXBlogs v2) of APEXBlogs.info which will be released shortly.

This is the 9th post... and is about a new feature in APEXBlogs called "Knowledge Base".

It consists out of three different parts (copied directly from the new APEXBlogs site):

Quick Tips

There're so many smart people out there, just like you, but they don't really want to start a blog. What about write a quick tip on this website? Once you are logged in you can share any tips, and your views on APEX in this area. Why just keep it in your head if you can share it with others?

Forum Mining

The APEX Forum is a great source of information, but many questions get repeated or answered only after a few iterations. This area will mine the forum for interesting questions and answers so you find the solution easily and fast.

APEX Enhancement Requests (and bugs)

You found a bug or want to have something just a bit different to work in APEX? Or you have a wish list of features you'd like to have in the next version of APEX? This area is exactly meant for that! So start to review the existing enhancement requests, comment on it and vote for the ones you like most or submit a new request when you can't find it.

What do you think? Will the above be useful and work?

Here are my reasons why I included it:

- I've seen so many posts out there about feature requests for ex. and then in the forum you have the same, but there was not a single place of the "truth", what the community wanted.

- In APEXBlogs v1 you could already write Quick Tips or Blog Posts it was called there directly from the site, but it wasn't used that much. By moving it to the knowledge base I hope people will start using it again more.

- And finally Forum Mining... a thing Steve Howard, John Scott and myself talked about for the first time, 4 or 5 years ago now and never did it... it's hard to do and very time consuming. For this section I'm searching for "Editors". The Editor will basically help to make this section a success. The way I see it working is that everybody can submit a link, but the editors will mine it. Or the alternative is that people mine it and the Editors review it.

Would anybody be interested in being an Editor on APEXBlogs?

(to be an editor I expect you have at least a few months APEX experience)

APEXBlogs v2 - Statistics

2011-02-27T22:30:00.005+01:00

This post is part of the 10 days of APEXBlogs. This series of blog posts highlight the features of the new version (APEXBlogs v2) of APEXBlogs.info which will be released shortly.

So far I blogged about:

Backend changes
Showing the blog posts APEX 4.0 style
Twitter sync for #apexblogs and #orclapex
Plugins section
Links
APEX Usage
Make your APEX app iPad compatible
Statistics (this post)

I guess you know by now I really like playing with charts (and numbers)... what about some statistics about what's happening in APEX world?

I included statistics about the number of Blogs, Blog Posts, Plugins, Tweets and Links in the new APEXBlogs site:

Once the new APEXBlogs goes into production I plan to add statistics about number of visitors and which countries are accessing the site the most.

If you can think of other statistics you want me to include, feel free to add a comment to this blog post.

Two posts to go before the launch...

APEX 4 (bug) - Series Type (Bar, Line, Marker) and Multiple Series

2011-02-27T20:38:00.010+01:00

A new feature in APEX 4.0 is that you can define per series what you want the series type (Bar, Line or Marker).

Lets start with an example.

We create a 3D Column chart based on the salary of the employees.

Our first Series looks like this (the Series Type is per default Bar):

select null as link, ename, sal

from emp

Now to add a second series you have two choices, either you add another value to the existing series or you create a new series. We will go with the first option, so our query becomes:

select null as link, ename, sal, nvl(comm,0) as comm

from emp

If you run the chart you see for both salary as commission a bar (column)

Now we want to add a line with the average of the salary, so we add another series with as sql query:

select null as link, ename, avg(sal) over() as avg_sal

from emp

The Chart Series look like this

Make sure you select Line as Series Type for Series 2 (the average salary)

When you run the chart you expect to see the same chart as above but with a line that represents the average of the salary...

As you can see that is not really what happened. It seems there is a bug in APEX 4.0.2.00.07 (and probably before) with defining multiple series in the same query.

What happened is that the first value, salary, is still a bar, but the second value, commission, changed from bar to line and the third value, average salary, became a bar (that is because our main chart type is a 3D Column chart, so it takes whatever is default). So APEX doesn't take the Series type into account correctly.

The workarounds is to not use the single query with multiple values, but a single query per series.

Running the chart again shows us what we expected

(Found in APEX 4.0.2.00.07)

APEX 4 (bug) - Chart Attributes > Add Series > Build Query button

2011-02-27T15:22:00.010+01:00

Let's pretend you still have that 3D Column chart of my previous post or create a new chart.

Now edit the chart and go to Chart Attributes and look for the Chart Series section.

Click the Add Series button, you'll get a screen like

Hit the Build Query button to open the wizard to generate the SQL statement and follow the wizard. Define the owner

Define the table or view

Define the Label and Value...

Hmm... the value option is not here... yes, that is a bug... if you go further with the wizard you will end up with "select * from emp" instead of a real query for the chart.

The strange thing though is that during the creation of the chart it works just fine. Also when you edit an existing series and hit the Build Query button it works ok as you can see on the next screenshot.

My guess is there's something wrong with session state.

The workaround is to edit an existing series, follow the wizard there, copy the sql statement, cancel the edit, and then add a new series and paste the sql statement. Or if you are more experienced and know the syntax of the chart you can just manually enter the sql statement.

(Found in APEX 4.0.2.00.07)

APEX 4 (bug) - Font Grid Label in Charts

2011-02-27T11:55:00.008+01:00

For a chart you can define the fonts and colors you want to use for the different components (mostly text) on the chart. This works great except for the Grid Label. It seems that that value never gets stored when you change it.

I thought if I wanted to change the grid lines of the chart I could change the Grid Label settings. I'm not sure why Label is specified after Grid and not Line, as I'm not aware of labels against the grid. It seems that currently there is a hardcoded value of "Black" against the line color of the X axis grid and nothing for the Y axis grid (so default of AnyChart).

Again the workaround is simple if you want to have a different line colors of the grid (X / Y Axis), you can just change it in the XML after you specified Custom XML = Yes.

The chart looks like this after doing the above change:

(Found in APEX 4.0.2.00.07).

APEX 4 (bug) - Axes in Charts

2011-02-27T10:18:00.015+01:00

Consider this chart, it just shows the salary of the employees in a 3D Bar chart.

Now, if you want your chart to start with e.g. 500 instead of 0 you need to define the axis minimum value.

The wizard shows X Axis: Min, so lets put 500 as the value in... However running the chart again gives the same result.

This is in fact a known bug in APEX 4 (bug id 11700598), or you can read on it in this forum thread. Basically the Axes Settings should show the Y Axis Min instead of the X Axis.

The workaround is to change your chart type to 3D Column (instead of 3D Bar Chart).

Running the page gives us this result, so yes it's different, but for this chart the wizard is correct. Later you can change the chart type again and it should be ok.

So again we want the Y Axis to start with 500 instead of 0, so we define the Y Axis: Min in the Axes Settings. (see that now Y Axis: Min is listed and not X Axis: Min)

Run the page again and the chart will start from 500 instead of 0.

So now you can change the type back to 3D Bar Chart and you see it applied the start value correctly (the axis start now from 500).

My recommendation to the APEX Development team would be that either we see both X and Y Axis min and max or add a dynamic action to the drop down list of the chart type to dynamically show the appropriate axis. (next to fixing the bug)

!! But there is even a nastier bug related to the above...

Let's say we kept the 3D Column chart type but added a scrollbar for the X-Axis.

Running the page shows us this! The chart is only partially visible.

This is related to the previous bug... as we defined a value of the X-Axis Min when the chart type was still 3D Bar Chart, APEX still keeps that into account... (that is why the workaround worked before). However in this case it has a negative impact on the way the chart is shown.

The way to correct the issue is, change the Chart Type back to 3D Bar Chart, delete the value that is in X-Axis Min, hit the Apply Changes button, edit the chart again and change the Chart Type back to 3D Column.

Running the page again shows the correct chart.

(Found in APEX 4.0.2.00.07).

APEX 4 (bug) - Gradient in Charts

2011-02-26T20:35:00.006+01:00

Something surprised me in APEX 4.0.2.00.07 (and probably entire 4.0).

APEX allows to specify a Gradient Angle when you specify two background colors for the chart and put the Background Type to Gradient. (see screenshot)

A value of 0 degrees results in a horizontal gradient with the first background color on the left and the second background color on the right.

Running the page results in:

Cool isn't it? ... But I just wanted it a little bit different, I wanted the first color (green) on top and the second color (yellow) at the bottom. So I would have thought if I change the value of the Gradient Angle to 90 that will do it... but no, the same (or very very similar).

Looking at the XML that was generated it showed me:

So although I put 90 degrees in the Gradient Angle, it seems like APEX divided it by something close to 60...

If you want the same as me and really use the Gradient Angle you either have to multiply your value by 60 or change the XML yourselves (Custom XML = Yes and you can change it). I prefer the second option as if they fix it (as I can't believe it was intentional!) you end up with a different gradient angle.

Happy charting ...

APEX 4 (bug) - Add marker to your chart

2011-02-26T19:49:00.007+01:00

It seems to me that in APEX 4.0.2.00.07 (and probably entire 4.0, but can't check at the moment) there's a bug with adding markers to your (bar/column) chart. For a Pie chart it works fine.

If you edit your Chart Attributes you can define a Marker in the Display Settings.

However when you run the page and look at the chart there is no Marker to see.

If you need Markers, there are two workarounds at the moment:

- customise the XML (my preferred option): you set Custom XML in the Chart Attributes to Yes and you change the marker section to the marker you want. You will see marker type="None", but you can easily change that. Below I changed it to Cross, to have a cross marker.

- add another Series in the chart of type Marker, but this is not my preferred option because you lose performance as it will need to run the query twice.

When you run the page after you changed the XML, the chart with the marker looks like this (see the cross on top of the bar):

I'm sure the APEX development team will fix it soon, but for now you know a workaround.

OBUG Benelux Connect 2011

2011-02-23T21:38:00.003+01:00

The OBUG Benelux Connect 2011 conference is almost there. If you want to go to the biggest Oracle conference in the Benelux, you have to be present on March 29 at SQUARE in Brussels, Belgium!

This year it's even better than last year, with top speakers such as Chris Leone, Tom Kyte, Wim Coekaerts, Andrew Sutherland and Peter Gates. There are over 42 different (mostly customer) presentations, User Experience Customer Feedback sessions, an enormous vendor showcase and a large Oracle demo ground.

Also for Oracle Application Express (APEX) there is again a complete track. The APEX sessions are not pure technical, but more case studies. It's a great way to see what others have done with APEX! I'll also do a presentation and this time it will be special for me, as it will be the first time I'll publicly show a product we developed "AE GPS Tracker/Intelligence", which is currently beta-tested by some pre-selected customers.

So I would say, OBUG Benelux 2011 is definitely not to miss! People like Tom Kyte and Wim Coekaerts (a Belgian) are not that much in the Benelux!

You find the complete program in the Program magazine OBUG Benelux Connect 2011.

You can register for the event here.

Hope to see you there!

Make your APEX app iPad compatible

2011-02-20T10:15:00.006+01:00

I really like surfing on my iPad whenever I'm not behind my laptop.

As the iPad doesn't have a big resolution, Apple made it so that it scales websites to fit on the device. Most of the time it's doing a really good job, but a lot depend on how the developer created the site.

If you look at APEX applications, if you are using a standard theme, you have a big chance it renders well and you don't have to do that much.

However if you find that something doesn't look good, the way I make my application 'iPad compatible' is by using a different css depending the browser and device that hits the app.

Below you see a screenshot of the Header in the Template of the new APEXBlogs site.

My starting theme for APEXBlogs v2 was theme 22, but I customised it heavily as you'll see in a couple of days. I'm doing that by overwriting the standard css by defining my own in the apexblogs.css file (so make sure your own css is defined after the standard APEX ones). If the max width of the device is 1024px (like the iPad) I overwrite my own css with specific settings for these devices. So in your link you define for the media "only screen and (max-device-width: 1024px)".

As you can see theme 22 of APEX 4 itself actually renders different css's based on the browser (see if IE in screenshot). I chose to not worry about IE6 compatibility, that is why that div "outdated-browser" is in.

75 days of silence

2011-02-14T09:50:00.004+01:00

I've been quiet for 75 days now, which seems a lot to me and never did feel like that! Time is flying...

After Tobias's message I felt I had to do another post and give you some feedback what is going on.

Just to assure you I'm fine I took a quick picture with my webcam. I might look a bit more tired as usual and my first grey hairs start to appear, but I'm still alive and kicking...

I'm still passionate about Oracle and APEX and work every day (and night) with this technology. That is also the biggest reason I was so quiet the last weeks. I've been very busy with so many exciting things! But I'll do some more blog posts about these in the next days and weeks as many are useful for the APEX community too.

I'm not sure you already knew but APEX Evangelists is back on the map. Sumneva didn't work out as expected and got dissolved in the form it was, in November last year (as a joint venture of APEX Evangelists and Sumner Technologies). So both John Scott and myself went back to our original name of APEX Evangelists. Scott Spendolini and Doug Gault decided to keep the name Sumneva as a new business venture in North America.

John and I decided to freshen up the look and feel of AE (APEX Evangelists) and the new website should go live very soon now. The new logo is already on, the content is coming...

Enough for now in this post... there is more to come :-) I'm hoping to go back to normal posting, meaning a new post every three days... and yes the new APEXBlogs is coming too...

Speak soon...

Dimitri

APEXBlogs v2 - APEX Usage

2010-12-01T08:19:00.004+01:00

This post is part of the 10 days of APEXBlogs. This series of blog posts highlight the features of the new version (APEXBlogs v2) of APEXBlogs.info which will be released shortly.

So far I blogged about

Backend changes
Showing the blog posts APEX 4.0 style
Twitter sync for #apexblogs and #orclapex
Plugins section
Links
APEX Usage (this post)

As I travel quite a lot and speak to different people, I get the impression that APEX is more and more used in all parts of the world. So I would find it very interesting which part of the world is using Oracle Application Express a lot and which parts of the world are just adopting it.

It's very hard to get these numbers, maybe Oracle themselves have an idea if they look at the statistics of apex.oracle.com.

I thought a long time about a way to get to that info, but there is no easy answer really:

I could look at the IP's that hit my sites and by that I can figure out from which country they are (e.g. by using IP2Location website)
I could ask people to create a profile/login on the APEXBlogs v2 site, but why would they do that?
I could mine other sites like Facebook, Linkedin, Blogs, Google, the APEX Forum etc. to see which people are talking about APEX or asking questions about it, but that would be technically the hardest job to do and I wouldn't find everybody that way either
I could manually enter numbers, based on my talks at conferences and other persons feedback
I could use Google Analytics (which is actually using the IP based solution) to see from which countries people come

My absolute dream would be that I would get APEXBlogs v2 in such a state that it's worthwhile for everybody dealing with APEX wanting to go to that site. We'll see in the future how that turns out, but you could definitely help me with that. I see APEXBlogs v2 evolving to more a portal page for the APEX Community... v2 is not anymore about just aggregating the blogs, it's doing a lot more as you could read before and will read in the next couple of posts.

Once we are online with APEXBlogs v2, the way you could help is talking about the site and tell everybody it would be fantastic to get the APEX adoption in card. You are probably as much a fan of APEX as me, but you might find it difficult to convince others to go with APEX and do more APEX projects. By showing that APEX is used all over the place, it might help to convince your client(s) and/or boss.

The other way you could help is to give me feedback about what would be useful for you and the people you know, so they have a reason to come to the site.

So back to the APEX Usage and how it will be shown in APEXBlogs v2.

I wanted to use a combination of two methods. My first routine looks at the people who are registered and plots that on a World Map (implemented and works great). In APEX 4.0 there's a wizard to create these maps. The second routine will look at the IP addresses that hit the site and verify if the numbers are aligned from the first routine. But I've an issue here... if I'm with a client and hit the site I've a certain IP address, when I'm at home I've another IP address, but I'm the same person. Or behind one IP address (e.g. a government) there might be 100 people using APEX.

I doubted to use a Google Map and show the points where people exactly are, but that would probably have the reverse affect and people don't want (or are not allowed) to share that information (privacy reasons).

APEX Patch 4.0.2 released

2010-11-20T09:28:00.004+01:00

Just a quick note to say that there's a new patch for Oracle Application Express that fixes a number of issues and also adds some enhancements to APEX (e.g. two new themes, API additions to APEX_UTIL etc.)

To download and read more about the patch set, Joel Kallman from the APEX Development team wrote a good blog post about it.

Thumbs up for the APEX Development team for giving us these nice additions and the fixes.

Oracle Application Express (APEX) 4.1 and beyond

2010-11-17T11:53:00.003+01:00

The APEX Development team updated the Statement of Direction for the future releases of Oracle Application Express.

As we can read on that page, Oracle Application Express 4.1 will focus on enhancement to existing functionality and additional capabilities to support applications running on mobile devices. Application Express 4.1 is planned to incorporate the following:

Development for Mobile Applications – Include themes and HTML templates suitable for smart phones and mobile devices.
Charting - Provide for chart rendering without using Flash (to enable display on mobile devices).
Error Handling - Improve error handling and user-defined exception processing.
Interactive Reporting – Allow multiple reports on one page and support pivot queries.
Tabular Forms – Allow multiple tabular forms on one page and continue to expand tabular forms validations.
Master-Detail-Detail – Allow the generation of pages to support master-detail-detail relationships.
Dynamic Actions – Enhance conditional processing and allow dynamic actions to be defined for tabular forms, reports, and buttons.
Plug-Ins - Add plug-in support for additional components and enhance plug-in definitions.
Use of ROWID – Allow usage of ROWID for Automatic DML processing (as an alternative to identifying the PK columns).
Modal Dialogue - Add ability to display a dialog on top of a page (the rest of the page will be grayed out).
Websheets – Allow for greater control over user interface, new page section types, and enhanced spreadsheet / datagrid integration.
Data Upload - Enable end-users to upload data into an existing table (within an application).
Accessibility – Improve accessibility in existing themes and HTML templates.
Numerous functional and performance improvements.

Great features I would say! For many of the above items we work around them with some hand written coding. As many of you know, I'm a heavy supporter of charts and dashboards and we've already been working on a non-Flash based charting engine for the current release of APEX.

This solution I actually showed at Oracle Open World too. We plan to release these non-Flash based charts soon too, so if you are on APEX 4.0 and you don't want to wait till 4.1 or later, no worries, something is coming ;-)

APEXBlogs v2 - Links

2010-11-14T08:15:00.003+01:00

The Links section as it currently stands on apexblogs.info I moved off the homepage. In APEXBlogs v2 it will be an entire new page which holds an Interactive Report with all the Links I think are useful for people wanting information about Oracle Application Express.

As it's an Interactive Report, you can use the Group By functionality (new in APEX 4.0) to see the number of links by type. I created that report as the alternative view.

As you can see in the screenshot I started to capture links to Blogs (obviously), Oracle User Group APEX SIGs, APEX Examples and General APEX Links.

APEXBlogs v2 - Plugins section

2010-11-13T20:18:00.006+01:00

I'll have to push back the release of APEXBlogs version 2 for some time. Most of the development is completed, but I'm still working on the new UI of the site. Before going live I also want to do some blog posts about what will be in this release, so if some of you have comments I can still consider these and possibly make changes. There are at least five other blog posts waiting, before the go-live...

As I wrote before, it's not just an update of the current APEXBlogs, instead it's a complete new release written from the ground up with many new sections/features.

One of the new sections in APEXBlogs v2 is the APEX 4 Plugins section. Aggregating blogs and tweets is fine, but in the APEX 4 world, plugins became very important, so I definitely wanted to keep up with what people wrote. So this new section of APEXBlogs is exactly doing that. It searches for the APEX 4 Plugins out there and aggregates them and provides you with an easy search (Interactive Report).

At this stage it aggregates the Oracle Plugins page and the Community Plugins rss feed. I decided to keep it like that for now and am not including other personal links to APEX plugins, but might consider to do that in the future if I see they don't get posted in the ones I aggregate now.

Technically it was interesting to get the Oracle Plugins as they don't provide an RSS feed of their plugins, so I parse the complete html page (with utl_html and regular expressions). I hope Oracle (Patrick) doesn't start to change the look and feel and the way they organized the page too many times ;-)

As you might see in the screenshot, I added a Rating column... I thought to review the plugins I aggregate and add my personal rating against them and some comments why. Obviously it will be a personal rating and might be subjective. On the community plugins page (apex-plugin.com) people can rate the plugins too, but the rating is not part of the RSS feed so I can't show that.

APEXBlogs v2 - Twitter sync for #apexblogs and #orclapex

2010-11-08T20:39:00.009+01:00

Another new feature of APEXBlogs v2 will be the synchronisation of Tweets with the hashtags of #apexblogs and/or #orclapex.

Some of you might remember I enabled the synchronisation of Tweets with the hashtag of #apexblogs already in version 1, but I had to take it out as my procedure was sometimes hanging. My procedure/query would work in 95% of the times, but if Twitter was down, it would hang and the process would stay there forever. As Twitter was not that stable in the earlier days it caused to much of an issue, that was the reason it disappeared after a few weeks.

But now it's there again and better than before! Again I use the same new APEX 4 features as with the blogs; namely the detail view of the Interactive Report to show the tweets exactly like I want.

Here's a screenshot:

For the people interested behind the query to retrieve a Twitter stream, you can use something like this:

select *
from xmltable(xmlnamespaces('http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom' as "AE"), '//AE:entry'
           passing httpuritype('http://search.twitter.com/search.atom?q=apexblogs').getxml()
          columns title            varchar2(250) path '/AE:entry/AE:title/text()'
);

That returns something like:

The above query would be easiest, but it won't always work. It depends the version of your database, your security settings and your environment.

Update:

Forgot to add that the twitter stream in APEXBlogs v2 is not realtime anymore. I'm going to sync every hour and will put a timer on the page till the next sync.

I choose to store the tweets in my own tables to have an archive, to increase performance and to enable easier search options through the Interactive Report.

APEXBlogs v2 - Showing the blog posts APEX 4.0 style

2010-11-06T13:44:00.000+01:00

The main reason for APEXBlogs was to aggregate the blog posts and be able to search in an easy manner.

The way it was initially implemented was through a normal (classic report) in APEX and a search bar which allowed you to search for any text. Next you had the possibility to search between dates or on specific blogs.

To improve the standard functionalities of APEX 3.x I added some jQuery. E.g. clicking on the icon of "Blog Selection" would slide open the checkboxes with the blogs. Another example is the use of the jQuery date picker instead of the standard date picker.

This is how the search and blog view looked in version APEXBlogs v1.

APEXBlogs version 2 is written completely from scratch in APEX 4.0 and tries to use as much functionalities of APEX 4.0. So the above way of searching and the use of a classic report got replaced by an Interactive Report.

This is how the report view of the Interactive Report looks like.

This is how the detail view of the Interactive Report looks like (new in APEX 4.0).

As you can see, that view is similar to the classic report view I had in version 1.

The big difference is that it's just an Interactive Report, so all functionality of the Interactive Report you can still use! Adding filters, group by, doing highlighting etc.

You can just switch between the two views.

If you didn't know this functionality existed, you find it in the Report Attributes of your Interactive Report. There is a Detail View section which you have to enable and then you can add the html code you want it to look like.

Very neat feature of the Interactive Reports and it became very useful with building this new version of APEXBlogs.

Pictures of APEXPosed 2010 Brussels

2010-11-05T08:48:00.015+01:00

Last week the first European APEXPosed event took place. It was a very successful event with over 120 people spread over the APEX and PL/SQL sessions. It was the first time ODTUG came to Europe and it was kind of special for me as it was in my own country.

Although it took some time to organise (special thanks to Kathleen and her team) and also during the event we still had a lot to do, I'm so happy everybody seemed to enjoy the event.

I believe the sessions where of a very high quality and the overall atmosphere was great (thanks to all the attendees!).

Below you find some pictures of the event (thanks to Patrick and Kathleen to share it with me).

Here you see Anthony presenting...

During the reception on the first day we had some good laughs as well. It was a great opportunity to talk to all the people and have some drinks together. On the picture from left to right: Patrick, John, Roel and me.

After the reception some of us went out to have some food. They thought I knew Brussels well, which is only partially true ;-) We were trying to get a place into the best two restaurants of Brussels but they were both fully booked, so we ended up in a Portuguese restaurant.

The food was good, but the company was even better ;-)

The last day we had the quiz. It was great fun! John did an excellent job in reading out the questions and staying serious at the same time as some questions were hilarious :-)

The winners of the quiz got an Amazon gift card and obviously had to be photographed...

First place: Peter

Draw for the second place: Edgar and Niels

Third place: Roel

Steven Feuerstein also gave us some books to handout to the people that didn't make it in the top 3: Carsten, Marco and Maurize

If you couldn't make this one, we are doing another event in the first quarter of 2012!

APEXBlogs v2 - Backend changes

2010-11-04T18:51:00.004+01:00

This post is part of the The 10 days of APEXBlogs.

Lets start with some things you don't see of APEXBlogs; the code that is pulling all the information from the blogs and aggregating it together.

This is the flow how it worked in version 1 of APEXBlogs (currently still used):

APEXBlogs itself is just the UI, in the backend you have packages (using XMLDB features) that connect to all the blogs and searches for changes. If it finds changes it will merge these changes in the tables APEXBlogs is build on. There are a couple of issues with this method:

The more blogs you have, the slower it gets to look for changes as it needs to connect to the blog, read, search for changes, disconnect, connect to the next blog, read, search for changes etc.
It not only became slower, it also used a lot of resources (CPU and memory)
There are different kinds of blogs e.g. WordPress, Blogger (Blogspot), WindowsLive etc. You would expect the RSS format is universal, but it isn't, so I ended up with different code for the different kinds of blogs.
The package was quite sophisticated as it could recognise the type of blog, but I got into trouble when people started to use their own urls (.com)

So I did a complete redesign of the backend code and the flow in version 2 looks now like this:

In version 2 of APEXBlogs there's only one connection necessary to update all the blogs at once.

The reason is because Google Reader is in the middle now. Google Reader is basically doing the hard work. I setup a specific Google Reader account for APEXBlogs which now holds the blogs to aggregate. Now I just access the Google Reader API to retrieve the posts and search for changes and I merge that stream into the backend tables.

Where the synchronisation of APEXBlogs version 1 took a couple of minutes, the synchronisation in version 2 is done in a couple of seconds. Also the database resources used and the network traffic are decreased a lot. My code is a lot simpler as I only need to maintain one code base, the one for Google Reader.

So now you know how things work behind the scenes... tomorrow I'll focus on how I show the blogs in APEXBlogs v2.

OBUG Benelux Connect 2011 - Call for Presentations

2010-11-03T23:24:00.003+01:00

On March 29, 2011 the Oracle Benelux User Group (OBUG) will hold its 4th OBUG Benelux Connect.

As in previous years, this event is being organized in close collaboration with Oracle.
Possibly you were one of the 700 visitors who attended the 2010 event at the Papendal Conference Centre in Arnhem, The Netherlands in March earlier this year and you are eager to present your customer case at the upcoming OBUG Benelux Connect 2011.

OBUG Benelux 2011 will be held at SQUARE Brussels Meeting Centre in Brussels, Belgium. Square is housed in an elegant, architecturally significant building originally constructed for the 1958 World Expo.

The theme for OBUG Benelux Connect 2011 is "The Real User Experience".

The strength of OBUG Benelux Connect is the customer cases presented by OBUG members and other Oracle customers. Learn from peers to maximise the value of your business-critical applications and technology.
Speakers will share their experiences and business solutions with you in more than 40 sessions scheduled in different streams: Applications (Oracle eBS, Peoplesoft, Siebel, JD Edwards, Primavera), Technology (DBMS, JDeveloper/ADF, etc.), Middleware (BPEL, SOA, EAS, etc.) & Business Intelligence (Hyperion, OBI, GRC, etc.). There will also be a complete APEX track.

CALL FOR PRESENTATIONS

End-users, project leaders, implementers, IT and functional managers and CIO´s share your experience with Oracle products in a 45-minute presentation – (slides to be prepared in
English, presentations to be given preferably in English). You can submit your abstract here.

The 10 days of APEXBlogs

2010-11-03T21:04:00.005+01:00

As in analogy with "The 14th Days of jQuery" I plan to write the next 10 days a blog post about the new features in APEXBlogs v2 (release planned for November 12th).

For the people that don't know APEXBlogs yet; I created that site for a couple of reasons:
- Give the APEX community an easy access to the most interesting blog posts about APEX
- Backup the content of the blogs, so even when a blog would disappear, the info around APEX would not be lost
- Have links to the other interesting sites about Oracle Application Express
- To promote APEX
- Show what you can do in APEX. The initial release of APEXBlogs was written in April 2008, at that time APEX 3.0/3.1 and showed the integration of jQuery and other 3rd party components.

An older screenshot of APEXBlogs:

I leave the current APEXBlogs site running, but am not doing any development or maintenance on it anymore. That means some links are out of date or some blogs don't get synced correctly. I'm sorry for that, but I decided to put my energy in the new version.

I started version 2 of APEXBlogs a couple of months ago and decided to build it again from scratch in APEX 4.0. Version 2 is working in parallel for some time now and is syncing the blog posts, so any blog post written as we speak will appear in this new version when it goes live.

I'm very excited about this new version of APEXBlogs, but at the same time I've a lot of competing priorities, so lets see what will make it in the release of the 12th of November ;-)

Final day to submit your abstract for ODTUG 2011

2010-10-25T16:02:00.003+02:00

There is only one day left to submit your presentation for the ODTUG conference... so you have to be quick to think about your title and abstract.

ODTUG is a great conference to meet and share ideas with other people using APEX. I always enjoy viewing others people presentations.

If you want to have your hour of fame, don't hesitate to submit!

SQL Developer 3 EA new features

2010-10-18T09:14:00.003+02:00

Last week seemed to be the week of the releases of the SQL Developer team. After Oracle Data Modeler 3.0 early in the week, it was the turn to SQL Developer at the end of the week.

Version 3.0 of Oracle SQL Developer has many new or enhanced features
e.g.

DBMS Scheduler
DBA Functionality
Files and Version Control
Migrations
PDF
PL/SQL Support
Query Builder
Schema Browser
SQL Plus Commands
Spatial
Tuning
Unit Testing
Unloading and Uploading

As you see some very cool and useful features. In some of our projects we use Spatial and Locator and the Map Viewer will become handy there. Having a DBA pane to get more info about the DBA is great too, so you don't have to write your own statements (scripts) or use EM.

I tried the Query Builder, but that didn't seem to work for me. It took a long time to search for the objects, but finally I just got a blank window. I could add other tables from other schema's, but the schema I was connected to was not included. Maybe I'm doing something wrong or it's because of the EA state and it's not optimal yet, not sure. I didn't really go into much detail to find the real cause as I've other priorities at the moment.

Next to the list of new features at the oracle website, it's also worthwhile to follow Kris Rice's, Sue Harper's and Barry Mcgillin's blogs as they blogged (or will be blogging) about some of the new features and included some demos. They are actually in the team that build this wonderful tool!

Data Compare for Oracle

2010-10-14T09:21:00.003+02:00

Just a quick note to say the people at Redgate have a public release of Data Compare for Oracle now. If you ever want to compare your data, this might be an option for you.

They are the same people who build Schema Compare for Oracle which I reviewed some time ago.

Oracle Data Modeler 3.0

2010-10-11T14:52:00.004+02:00

I just read that SQL Developer Data Modeler is out (renamed to Oracle Data Modeler).

The Early Adopter release for 3.0 can be found here.

Also check Kris Rice's blog as he's doing some nice blog posts about this new version and the features that come with it.

Oh... and if you didn't know yet, Oracle Data Modeler is FREE now :-)

APEX 4.0 Tree

2010-10-08T14:32:00.003+02:00

In APEX 4.0 there's a new Tree Region. It's really cool and a lot better than the previous tree in APEX 3.x.

When you navigate throughout this tree there is no submit anymore, it also looks a lot better.

The only catch is that the query is not that straight forward.
If you look under the query, you'll see the explanation what columns the query should have etc. Be careful as the example under need is missing the level column!

Anyway, check out the tree, it's definitely something that people seem to like.

APEXposed 2010 Brussels

2010-09-29T08:56:00.004+02:00

It's only 4 weeks away, then there is APEXposed! It's a two day (October 27-28) Seriously Practical Training. This conference is special as it's actual two conferences in one. People registering for APEXposed can also attend the sessions from OPP (the PL/SQL conference in the same hotel, same date, with Steven Feuerstein).

It's the first time ODTUG is coming to Europe and they want to make it a success. They teamed up with the local European Oracle User Groups. As it's in Belgium there's a strong collaboration with OBUG (Oracle Benelux User Group). With the OBUG APEX SIG we already had a first event in June, so APEXposed will be the second event where the OBUG APEX SIG will be present.

If you look at the agenda for APEXposed in Brussels, it's unbelievable... the best speakers and most known names in Europe will present. A big part of the APEX Development will be there as well.

But that is not all... if you are a member of OBUG, you get $100 off the already low price! (You'll have to use the OBUG discount code)

Space is limited, so I recommend registering as soon as possible. If you need to spend the night, click here to reserve your room. ODTUG has reserved a block of rooms at a special conference rate.

Mike for President (ODTUG)

2010-09-28T21:54:00.003+02:00

This is a post to help my friend Mike Riley to be reelected as the President of ODTUG (Oracle Development Tools User Group). It's not so much because I like him, it's because I think he deserves it.

During the last two years Mike made ODTUG even more successful than they were before. With his kindness, his easiness to communicate and always with a smile on his face he makes us all feel really appreciated and welcome at ODTUG and the Kaleidoscope conference.
In the last years, Mike was a real believer in APEX and made sure we had a dedicated track for that. Obviously it was not him alone doing all the work, there were many other people, but it's under his president ship the tracks really grew to what they are now (the most APEX presentations and highest quality of any conference).

I included a picture we took at OOW a week ago (thanks Joel for taking it!), so you can see for yourself how he looks like if you didn't know him yet (Mike's on the right) ;-)

This year there are 14 people trying to get elected and there are only 4 places!
So, if you still need to vote for the ODTUG Board Elections, don't forget Mike...

OOW - finished

2010-09-24T01:16:00.004+02:00

I'm heading back to Belgium at the moment... It was a very busy week at OOW but I enjoyed it very much. I still plan to do some more blogging once I'm back.

In the meantime I would appreciate people having pictures of the APEX Meetup or other APEX sessions putting a link on this post... normally I'm the guy doing a lot of pictures, but I forgot my camera this time...

The only picture I've so far of the APEX Meetup is the one taken by Joel, where I stand with Jason (right).

Boarding now...

OOW - Saturday

2010-09-19T06:13:00.000+02:00

Today I had a more relaxing day in San Francisco. After having done some work in the morning I went out with John and Rich. We had some nice food in the most famous Chinese place in San Francisco "House of Nanking". We went to that place for the first time in 2007, when Carl B. recommended it and took us there. Again the food was excellent.

When we walked back to the hotel, there was an event going on in China town. On the picture you see Rich and me with a girl everybody was taking pictures of.

Later that afternoon we had some coffee and nice and long chats. Time goes fast in good company...

ACE Director Briefing and start OOW

2010-09-18T17:24:00.004+02:00

It's Saturday today and I'm currently in the Hilton hotel on O'Farrell Street in San Francisco.

Today there are no special plans, it's a day between the Oracle ACE Directors briefing of the last two days and the start of Oracle Open World (OOW) tomorrow.

Every year just before OOW, Oracle plans a briefing to the Oracle ACE Directors where people like Thomas Kurian (Executive Vice President of Product Development), Ted Farrell, Mark Townsend and other product manager tell us what's going to be announced at OOW and what the plans are in the future. I find it a real privilege to make part of this and appreciate the openness of Oracle. We all had to sign a NDA so are not allowed to speak about it.

Most of these things will be announced on Sunday and during the rest of the week at OOW, so a little more patience ;-) The only thing I can say is that the announcements won't be that much in the area I normally blog about, nevertheless the announcements are worthwhile! Something to look forward to...

One thing that is already public, is that Oracle SQL Developer Data Modeler is FREE from now on!

Tomorrow and the days after that the madness begins. After the acquisition of Sun, this event is even bigger as JavaOne is also at OOW. It will be interesting to meet all these new people.

I'm doing 3 presentations at OOW this year and one panel discussion. My first presentation is already on Sunday where I'll speak about upgrading your APEX 3.x application to APEX 4.0. I'll do a live demo where I take an export of an APEX 3.2 application (DG Tournament) and import that in APEX 4.0 and show the things that got changed or needs updated and I'll talk about the new features you can leverage now that you're in APEX 4.0.

Stay tuned ...

Upgrade to APEX 4.0 - Tabular Forms

2010-09-13T13:03:00.008+02:00

It was a long time ago I promised this post, so finally today I found some time to finish the post.

In APEX 4.0 the Tabular Forms got enhanced quiet a lot. To make use of these enhancements it requires some manual changes of the page the tabular form is on, so when you upgrade your existing APEX 3.x (or older) applications the tabular forms are NOT upgraded automatically (or at least not completely), but they should still work like they did before.

The enhancement I want to discuss in this post is Adding a row to the tabular form.

Before APEX 4.0 when you hit the Add Row button, the page got submitted and a specific Add Rows process on the page got called.

In APEX 4.0 that changed: the page is not submitted anymore. When you hit the Add Row button, some javascript (addRow()) is called to add a new row to the tabular form.
So to make use of this enhancement, you need to make three changes:

Change the button to not Submit the page anymore, instead it should "Redirect to Url" with as Url target: javascript:addRow();
Delete the Apply MRU after submit processes (with the condition linked to the Add Row button): as the page is not submitted anymore when you click the Add Rows button it is not necessary to have that process anymore (obsolete)
Delete the Add Rows after submit processes (obsolete)

To identify the pages you have to change manually I use this query:

select WORKSPACE, APPLICATION_ID, APPLICATION_NAME, PAGE_ID, PAGE_NAME, PROCESS_NAME
from APEX_APPLICATION_PAGE_PROC
where PROCESS_TYPE in ('Multi Row Update','Add rows to tabular form')

It results in the below output and shows which pages you still have these processes on:

Another thing I found while upgrading my applications to APEX 4.0 related to tabular forms: if you still used an old template lay-out, the new functionality didn't work (missing of some tokens) and some other things which got already fixed in the 4.0.1 patch (see patch notes).

PL/SQL Developer on OSX

2010-09-12T08:23:00.011+02:00

Running on Mac OSX is great and although most of the time I have a native Mac OSX app I can use, it sometimes happens I want to run a Windows-only program e.g. Internet Explorer (just to see if my app works in this browser!), BI Publisher plug in for MS Word, PL/SQL Developer or Schema Compare for Oracle.

So the options are running a Virtual Machine (I use VMWare Fusion) or use a program like CrossOver (Windows emulator based on Wine). Not all applications work with CrossOver, but it's worth trying to get it working there as it's more lightweight than firing up a VM.

In this blog post I'll show how to install PL/SQL Developer in CrossOver.

Once CrossOver is installed, you click Configure - Install Software.

Select Other Application and in Select an installer search for plsqldev804.exe file (which you can download from the PL/SQL Developer website. Finally hit the Proceed button to do the install. You just follow the wizard from PL/SQL Developer to finalize the install.

Once that is done we'll have to install the Oracle client so we can connect with PL/SQL Developer to our Oracle database. Easiest will be to download the Instant Oracle Client for Microsoft Windows (32-bit). Unzip the file and copy the directory to your C-drive. To open the C-drive: in the CrossOver menu click on Manage Bottles - Advanced Tab - Open C: drive in Finder.

Next you'll have to set the Environment Variables, so PL/SQL Developer knows where it can find the Oracle Client. Edit the cxbottle.conf file which you find in C:\

Add in the [EnvironmentVariables] section (depending your db characterset):

ORACLE_HOME=c:\instantclient_11_2
TNS_ADMIN=c:\instantclient_11_2
NLS_LANG=AMERICAN_AMERICA.UTF8

Next create a tnsnames.ora file with the connections to your database e.g.:

ORCL = (DESCRIPTION = (ADDRESS = (PROTOCOL = TCP)(HOST = localhost)(PORT = 1521)) (CONNECT_DATA = (SERVER = DEDICATED) (SID = ORCL)))

and copy that file into c:\instantclient_11_2 (or the directory you unzipped the Oracle instant client)

That's it... if you now start PL/SQL Developer (CrossOver - Programs - PL/SQL Developer), it will look like it's a native OSX app.

I had to do one more thing to get it complete like on a real Windows system. The icons in PL/SQL Developer looked a bit funny (gray/black - not really readable).
To solve that, go to PL/SQL Developer - Tools - Preferences - User Interface and uncheck Faded disabled buttons.

Fast writing of Queries with Joins in SQL Developer

2010-09-10T09:03:00.005+02:00

When you create a report in APEX and build the source of that SQL query with the wizards you get these annoying quotes (") around the column and table names. It also takes time to do it with the wizard, time I don't have.

I tend to write my queries in SQL Developer so I can immediately fine-tune the query so it's exactly what I need. Writing your queries in a tool like SQL Developer has many more advantages, as you can look back in the history of your statements, you can immediately do an Explain Plan and format the code but even more immortantly it's very fast to write statements.

Let's say you need to write a query that joins four tables, you can just write it manually... Or your could just select the tables from the tree and drag them on your SQL Worksheet. SQL Developer will ask if it needs to join the tables for you and write the statement. It uses aliases for the tables, which is also something I like better than using the full table names in front of the columns...

Remark: you need foreign keys in place so the joins are written correctly.

As I saw many people didn't seem to know about that, I thought to quickly write something as it's definitely a time saver.

APEX 4.0: Application Utilities

2010-09-09T09:26:00.006+02:00

I tend to use the Grouping functionality to logically group my APEX pages.
E.g. I've a group called 'Admin' which hold all the Admin pages.

I find it easy to see the pages for that section of the application and I can verify if my security model is fine on these pages. E.g. the pages should be protected with the Admin Role.
It also helps me to separate the work between developers. If I tell my colleague, go and change the Admin section, it's easy to find for that person.

You can also use ranges of pages for the different sections of the application.
E.g. 10000-20000 is for Admin pages.

Before APEX 4.0, the Grouping of Pages was in the Task area on the right hand side of the page, but that got changed. Now you find a lot of the Goodies in "Application Utilities" (see red arrow in the quick pick icons).

Clicking on that link will give you access to the Application Dashboard, the Upgrade Application wizard and many other features. On that page on the right hand side you'll see Page Specific Utilities.

Clicking on the "Cross Page Utilities" link will give you the links for grouping pages or bulk editing them (a feature I use a lot too, to rename my pages for ex.).

So the grouping feature is a bit more tucked away in APEX 4.0, but then you get a more logical grouping of features you can do.

SQL: Start day and End day of week

2010-09-08T21:49:00.007+02:00

I just got an interesting question: how do you know for a date, in which week (Monday - Sunday) it falls.

I created a little test script to get 31 days of data:
(date_c is the same as date_d, but in a more readable output. c stands for char, d for date)


select to_char(sysdate + level, 'Day DD-MON-YYYY HH24:MI') as date_c,
   (sysdate + level) as date_d
from dual
connect by level <= 31

Next I used the NEXT_DAY function to get the first Monday after that date, and the same for the Sunday. As it will give you the results of the next week I had to subtract 7 days so I was sure it would fall under the week the date was in.
e.g. if you have a date Wednesday 8 of September, that person wanted to have Monday 6th-Sunday 12th. If I just did NEXT_DAY of 8-SEP I would get 13-SEP, that is why I first had to subtract 7 to go to a previous week and get the next Monday.
For the end date it's similar, but there you only have to subtract 1 day, as only the Sunday might be a problem, as the next Sunday is the next week.

So the final query became:


with t1 as (
select to_char(sysdate + level, 'Day DD-MON-YYYY HH24:MI') as date_c,
    (sysdate + level) as date_d
from dual
connect by level <= 31 )
 select date_c,
        next_day(trunc(date_d)-7,'Monday') as start_day_of_week,
        next_day(trunc(date_d)-1,'Sunday') as end_day_of_week
  from t1

A more readable screenshot:

Update (after comments of Kees and Alex): the following solution looks even more elegant and is NLS independent:

with t1 as (
select to_char(sysdate + level, 'Day DD-MON-YYYY HH24:MI') as date_c,
    (sysdate + level) as date_d
from dual
connect by level <= 31 )
 select date_c,
        trunc(date_d,'iw') as start_day_of_week,
        trunc(date_d+7,'iw')-1 as end_day_of_week
  from t1

Upgrading to APEX 4.0: jQuery

2010-09-07T11:01:00.005+02:00

In a lot of my APEX 3.x projects I used jQuery to extend the standard functionalities of APEX with some more interactive (client-side) components.

In jQuery there are very nice plug-ins, like a modal window, a grid, tooltips etc.

If you try to run your APEX 3.x application in APEX 4.0 you might find these jQuery components/plug-ins are not working anymore. The cause can be multiple:

You might have used an older version of jQuery and the plug-ins you used with that, which are not compatible with the jQuery version in APEX (1.4)
You load jQuery, but APEX loads their build-in jQuery too and things get mixed up

During the migration of my APEX 3.x application to APEX 4.0 I just take off all references to jQuery I made myself. Just make sure that in your template the #HEAD# is before any other jQuery plug-ins you try to run. Also make sure the jQuery plug-ins you use are compatible with jQuery 1.4.2. APEX ships with a lot of extra jQuery plug-ins like jQuery UI, js-tree etc so if you used that it's not necessary anymore to include them. (to see a complete list of files that ship with APEX, look into /images/libraries/)

Before I loaded my files as part of my Page Template, but I'm not sure I would still do that.
If you switch from template you lose the references. It might be better for maintainability point of view to include it in a region on Page 0. It will have a small performance hit, as APEX will have to look for it on Page 0, but it makes maintainability easier.
But going forward I'm converting all my custom javascript and jQuery plug-ins to APEX plug-ins and the files get loaded as part of the plug-ins. A lot of the javascript can disappear as it can be replaced by the build-in Dynamic Actions of APEX 4.0.

Hope it can help some of you when you see javascript errors when you try to run your APEX 3.x app in APEX 4.0. But don't panic to fast, it's probably just the way jQuery gets loaded.

Upgrading to APEX 4.0: Templates

2010-09-06T20:57:00.004+02:00

In the last weeks I migrated more applications from APEX 3.x to 4.0 and thought to share my thoughts on the Theme and Templates part of the application.

I've applications that were initially build in APEX (HTMLDB) v2 and other build straight with APEX 3.x. Some applications used a build-in theme, but more had a custom look and feel.

Most migrations went ok, but I did have issues when I used templates which didn't have all tokens (#...# things in html that get replaced at run time by APEX) e.g. with tabular forms (but I'll do a specific blog post on that - and is already a known issue).

I'm personally following the path of installing a new APEX 4.0 theme for my application and apply changes to that to get the same look and feel I had before. Or at least I verify my custom templates to support the new APEX 4.0 features.
I also try to update it to a nicer and more up-to-date look and feel.

The reason why I'm following this approach are multiple:

better w3c compliant
easier for screen readers (for disabled people)
fresher and more up-to-date look and feel
support for all new APEX 4.0 features
more div/css based layout, which makes it more clean and easier to adapt in the future

But obviously you should decide yourself if it's worth updating your templates in your applications ...

APEX Meetup @ OOW 2010

2010-09-02T11:21:00.001+02:00

It's an annual tradition, so also this year we'll organize an APEX Meetup at the 4th Street Bar & Deli on the Tuesday (7.30 PM) during Oracle Open World.

Here you find some pictures of last year. As you can see, it's always fun with nice people, drinks and food.

Every year we get more people during the meetup, so we started to get sponsors to help to pay for the bills ;-)

Thanks so much to our sponsors of this year:
- Oracle Technology Network (OTN)
- Oracle Development Tools User Group (ODTUG)
- APEX Development Team

If you or your company wants to sponsor aswell, feel free to send me a mail or add a comment to this post. The current total to spend is $500 :-)

See you soon!

Follow-up on comparing two Oracle schemas

2010-08-25T20:55:00.021+02:00

Over 4 years ago I wrote a blog post about software that helps you to compare two Oracle schemas. That post is accessed a lot and I still get questions about it, so I decided to write a follow up on that post as things change over time.

Comparing two Oracle schemas is still something I have to do regularly, e.g. if I want to compare a development, test and production instance after a deployment of an application.

Alongside Oracle Application Express (APEX), I use Oracle SQL Developer daily. They have a built-in Database Diff tool which works, but I tend to use other tools as well, as it’s hard with SQL Developer to see exactly what has changed. We built our own tool in APEX that compares schemas based on dbms_metadata, which we use when we have access only through the APEX interface. But when I can run things from my own system, I like to use Schema Compare for Oracle.

The people of Red Gate wrote a nice post on how to use their software, with screenshots and steps you can follow, so I won't repeat that. Instead I’m going to compare it against the Diff Tool built into SQL Developer.

Simplicity

The older I get, the more I can appreciate user-friendly software. That is something I try to do in the software I write myself, follow the KISS principle = keep it simple stupid.

For me software has to look good, ’be easy to use and do what it’s intended to do in an efficient way. If I want to compare two schemas I just want to follow a couple of steps:
1. Select my source and target database
2. Select the schema(s) I want to compare
3. Optional - select what exactly it should compare (tables, packages etc.)
4. Get an overview of the results
5. Produce synchronization scripts

Schema Compare for Oracle (SCfO)

Here’s how it works in Schema Compare for Oracle.

When you open Schema Compare you have to create or open a project.

It asks you for the source and target database you want to connect to and which schema you want to compare. An advantage in SCfO is that you can compare multiple schemas at once.
Another thing I found interesting was the option to compare against a Snapshot. You basically take a “picture” of your schema at a certain moment in time and compare against that. Very handy when you can’t access both schemas from the same location. Or if you develop applications and want to generate upgrade scripts, I see the use of snapshots too.

But let’s get further with the normal schema compare.

In SCfO you don’t select the objects first, you just hit the Compare Now button and SCfO starts to compare the whole schema directly. At first I thought, I don’t really want you to do that as you are doing a lot of work for nothing, but the more I used the tool, the more I appreciated it. To start a comparison is very easy and quick...

One thing I found handy as well is the Options tab, which allows you to define if the tool needs to ignore white spaces, storage clauses etc.

When we are happy with the options, we click the Compare Now button and we get a screen with the progress.

Once it’s finished you have a complete overview of the differences in both schemas.

I like this screen a lot as it has many more functionalities than you would first imagine. The filter (find box) is very handy to find some specific objects quickly. You can also sort by different things and just from the way it looks it is so easy to understand what is different in which schema and database! But the nicest thing is when you click on a row where there are differences. It shows you both versions and highlights the differences. No need for an extra tool or text editor to get that information out. It’s just there.

If you want to create an upgrade script or make both schemas equal you just have to use the Synchronization Wizard...

The wizard asks you what it has to do and generates a script for you or automatically synchronizes both schemas based on the objects you selected.

I think Schema Compare for Oracle does it really well. So let’s compare it to the comparison tools that come with Oracle SQL Developer.

Oracle SQL Developer

In SQL Developer you go to Tools - Database Diff.

The first time it will tell you it’s using Oracle Change Management, a payable option of the Oracle database, and you have to acknowledge you have a proper license to use that.

Next, it will pop up with a screen that allows you to select a source and destination connection and immediately asks you what objects you want to compare.

Clicking on Next shows you a screen where you can select the individual objects.
You can view all objects at once, or change the select-list to only see tables, sequences and select the objects that way. This might be a good thing to do if you have many objects!

Once you click Finish it will compare the objects and present you the result in a Diff Report.

You can click on the green SQL button and it will generate the script for you based on the differences you selected.

So it’s rather straightforward to compare two Oracle schemas in SQL Developer, but there are some things I would prefer a bit different.

This is my wish list:
1. Not be forced to have the Change Management license for your Oracle database. The price depends your Oracle Database license, but it can be high if you just want to compare two schemas through SQL Developer.
2. Be able to compare multiple schemas at the same time.
3. Get a cleaner Diff Report, which allows me to add filters to it and allows me to see what exactly is different between the two versions. At the moment I just see a count there, when I click on the row. I get the script to generate that version, but I couldn’t find a way to see exactly the source and target and compare them side-by-side.

Point 3 is my biggest issue and that is why I searched for something else that made my life easier and finally came across Schema Compare for Oracle. Although Red Gate created a Windows only version of Schema Compare for Oracle, so as a Mac user I need to run it through a VM, I find it worthwhile to do it. The interface of SCfO is very clean, it’s easy to use and it gives me most features I’m searching for. There is even a SQL Developer plugin for SCfO (search for Schema Compare for Oracle in the SQL Developer Plugin repository).

So is Schema Compare perfect and is it better in every aspect than the Diff Tool in SQL Developer? Almost, but not completely. SQL Developer supports the comparison of Materialized Views (and their logs) and Database links, which SCfO doesn’t do in the release I tested (1.3).The version of SQL Developer I used was 2.1. I’m not sure the Diff Tool in SQL Developer 3 (which will be released in a few weeks/months) will be different...

Happy comparison!

APEX 4.0.1 Patch released

2010-08-18T18:28:00.004+02:00

Hi just read Joel Kallman's post that the Oracle Application Express (APEX) team released 4.0.1 which corrects a number of issues found in APEX 4.0.

I recommend going to 4.0.1 if you have 4.0 installed as soon as possible.

If you still have 3.x running and want to upgrade to 4.0 you can directly download the 4.0.1 release and install that.

The new version of APEX is 4.0.1.00.03.

Add Default to Tabular Form in APEX

2010-08-09T15:58:00.003+02:00

If you want to set a default value for a column in your tabular form, you can set the Default Type to "PL/SQL Expression or Function" and put into Default e.g. 'N'.

That sets the default for that column to the static text 'N'.

Upgrade to APEX 4.0 - Known Issues - Workarounds and Patches

2010-08-04T15:21:00.000+02:00

If you upgrade your application from APEX 3.x to 4.0 you might encounter some issues.

At ODTUG I did a live migration of an application written in APEX 3.2 to 4.0 and I talked about some of the issues I discovered and how I worked around them. I'm doing the same presentation at APEXPosed in Brussels in October. You also might have seen my previous posts where I upgrade DG Tournament from APEX 3 to 4.

On the Known Issues page you see the issues categorized nicely. If the issues can be fixed by working around it, it's also mentioned there. Oracle is working hard on a patchset (4.0.1) and they hope to release it soon. On Metalink you can already find patches for specific issues too.

I plan to write some other blog posts with steps I did when upgrading DG Tournament to APEX 4.0.

APEX Father is speaking ...

2010-08-04T14:54:00.001+02:00

If you didn't pickup another important APEX blog to follow yet... you definitely want to follow Mike Hichwa.

Mike is the "father" of APEX, it must be over 10 years ago he started with the development of APEX (HTMLDB/Project Flows).

Mike is a VP at Oracle and is now responsible for a lot more than APEX alone. He also has SQL Developer and many other tools all related to Database Development.

ODTUG comes to Europe in October! Registration open!

2010-08-03T16:00:00.003+02:00

As announced on the latest OBUG APEX SIG, we will participate in the first ever ODTUG event in Europe!

It's a two day conference focused on PL/SQL and APEX, with two full tracks for each.

If you look at the Agenda you will see the presenters are well known in the APEX community and amongst the best in their field. On the PL/SQL side you have ofcourse Steven Feuerstein and a lot of other big names.

Registration is open now, so don't wait to register, places are limited!

My first time at Orcan - and wearing a kimono!

2010-07-15T17:03:00.001+02:00

A few months ago I got an invitation from the Swedish Oracle User Group (Orcan) to present at their event, which I agreed to do. It was my first time in Sweden and it was an unbelievable experience. The environment is so nice there... a lot of green (trees), a lot of water, nice people...

About the event itself, it started all normal. My first presentation was "Mastering an APEX Page", which you might have seen me doing before. I basically explained how an APEX page works and how/where to change things so you get exactly what you want.

But this event was in a SPA hotel... a very relaxing environment with hot tubs, steam baths etc. and everybody was wearing a kimono!

My second presentation I did in such a thing! It was very strange in the beginning to be wearing a kimono, but soon it became very nice and comfortable. I talked about my experiences going from APEX 3.x to 4.0 and demoed a lot of the new features in 4.0.

The event was also a great time to meet other people I didn't meet before but follow on internet. On the picture you might recognize Francisco Munoz Alvarez, Daniel Morgan, Husnu Sensoy, Grant Ronald and Jose Senegacnik. We all had a great time with some nice food.

If you've never been to Sweden or one of the events of Orcan, it's definitely worth it.

Thanks to Patrik Norlander and his team to make this an unbelievable experience.

DG Tournament / World Cup 2010 wrap-up

2010-07-15T09:21:00.000+02:00

The World Cup 2010 is over... Spain is victory, the Netherlands lost in extra time, but can be proud on the tournament they played. And I was surprised how well Germany played.

Over 400 people had fun on DG Tournament by betting on the games and chatting with others.
Congratulations to the top 5!

The people interesting in some stats; there's a stats page in the app itself and below I put a screenshot of the page loads during the time of the World Cup. Over 120,000 page loads... not bad at all.

See you again in the next tournament... hopefully Belgium qualifies next time!

OBUG APEX SIG - APEX 4.0 day - the month after

2010-07-15T08:37:00.000+02:00

On Thursday June 17 the first OBUG (Oracle BeNeLux) APEX SIG 4.0 day took place in congress centre 't Elzenveld in Antwerp. Over 90 visitors, great sessions and a beautiful day, made it a very successful event.

After I welcomed the people and talked a bit about the purpose of the OBUG APEX SIG, we kicked off with the first presentation (keynote) of the day. Patrick Wolf talked about Oracle APEX 4.0 - The next step in Web Application Development. He gave an overview of the new features in APEX 4.0 and talked about how things change for a developer.

Next Patrick Hellemans of InterAccess came on stage to talk about the Maturity level of APEX. He talked about developing in Agile, how to handle projects and by having a framework be able to go even faster.

After lunch Roel Hartman presented "Creating sub-zero Dashboard plugin for APEX with Google Visualizations". He showed how you can create a more advanced APEX Plugin (based on Google Visualizations). His demos were very cool! Roel already blogged about the event too.

Then it was my turn. I talked and demoed Websheets and Team Development. Where APEX was the Access killer a few years ago, Websheets will be the Excel killer. Websheets changed a bit over time (compared to beta versions I saw); it's now much more a collaboration tool, next to the availability for end-users to work with and share data. I think the wiki functionalities are really good already, for the data part I would like to see some more features in APEX 4.1. If there's one feature I would like to have in there, it's a pivot functionality.
Team Development is a first step into the direction to control your entire projects from within APEX itself. There's still place for improvements (e.g. link with other bug tracking systems), but I strongly believe it will already help many people managing their project in a more structured way.

Olivier Dupont and Jan Huyzentruyt from iAdvise showed other new features in APEX 4.0. They talked about the improvements in Globalization, Interactive Reports, Excel integration etc.

The last presentation of the day was for Iloon Ellen-Wolff. She talked about the enhancements of Tabular Forms in APEX 4.0.

As you can see, the day was packed with sessions :-) This first OBUG APEX SIG day was very technical. In the future we plan to have less technical presentations as well, especially for business people.

I would like to thank everybody who came along for the great atmosphere. Special thanks to Roel Hartman and the OBUG Secretary to help organizing the event.

All the above presentations you can download on the OBUG website.

Today - blogging day

2010-07-15T07:27:00.001+02:00

As I've so many blog posts in my Draft Folder, I decided to try to at least finish a few before the end of today...

ODTUG 2010 - Back in DC after 4 years

2010-06-26T10:27:00.003+02:00

In 2006 I went to ODTUG Kaleidoscope for the first time... it was also in Washington DC and in the exact same hotel! It was also my first visit to the US, so it's a memory I'll never forget.
I already blogged in 2006, so it's nice to see what I had to say at that time ;-) (and the World Cup was also going on!)

Now we are four years later and I'm back where my "Oracle Conferences journey" started.

Time goes so fast... four years ago I was a visitor/participant. Now I've a booth with my company and am presenting almost every day...

WC2010 - DGTournament - Next Round

2010-06-26T10:21:00.003+02:00

So far the World Cup 2010 was a bit unpredicted. Teams like France and Italy I expected to go through, but they didn't. That it's difficult to predict the right autcome of a football game is reflected in the stats at DG Tournament.

The next round is starting now, so don't forget to do your bets again!

APEX 4.0 goes production

2010-06-23T14:51:00.002+02:00

It's finally there... the day we all waited for :-)

You can download APEX 4.0 production release at this very moment.

Sites up again

2010-06-18T09:46:00.003+02:00

We are back in business :-)

We also upgraded our systems, so it should run even smoother...

My sites temporarily down

2010-06-18T08:58:00.003+02:00

Just a quick note that I'm aware of the problems with my sites e.g. dgtournament.com, apexblogs.info, ...

It's a server issue and we are looking into it.
It should be working again soon.

Thanks for your patience.

APEX 4.0 Websheets - Behind the scenes

2010-06-16T21:00:00.004+02:00

Tomorrow during my presentation about Team Collaboration in APEX 4.0, I'll talk about Websheets. While I was going over my presentation again I came accross two things I thought are interesting.

The first; if you want to search in SQL Workshop for the Websheets table, you want to type APEX$ as they all start with that. However if you type APEX$ in the search it doesn't find the tables. To find the tables you have to escape the $ sign, so your search becomes "APEX\$", then SQL Workshop finds the tables.

Secondly, when you have a closer look at the columns, it's commenly known there are 50 date, 50 numbers and 50 varchar2 columns. But I didn't notice before, there is also a Geocode column in the definition of the table. The last weeks I'm involved in a project that uses Geocodes, so I find it interesting to see there's already something in Websheets for that...

CD APEX 4.0: Feedback feature and Team Development

2010-06-14T19:17:00.012+02:00

This blog post is part of a series posting "Count Down to APEX 4.0 Public Release" (click on link to view history).

In the previous posts we imported our application (and database objects) in APEX 4.0, ran the Advisor to check if the application didn't have any errors and upgraded some components like charts, validations etc. to their new equivalent in APEX 4.0.

We still have some javascript errors in our application and we should now open page by page and see if we have any issues or if we can make better use of the APEX 4.0 features.

We could take a piece of paper to write down all the changes we want to make to the app or use tools like Jira, Fogbugz and many others. Instead I'm going to use the Feedback features of APEX 4.0 in combination with Team Development. This allows me to have a structured plan of the changes I want to make.

We'll create a new (special) page, called the Feedback Page.

We can change the attributes of this page, but we'll just go with the defaults for now.
That's all you have to do to enable feedback for your application. Now people can tell you what they like, don't like and want improved... all that information will appear in the Team Development section of APEX 4.0.

The wizard created a new page and an entry in the navigation bar (which you find in Shared Components). So you can manually do these steps too.

As I already included the Navigation Bar in my custom look and feel of DG Tournament, I literally didn't have to do anything else. I just got the Feedback button (link), which if you click on you get a popup to enter feedback information.

As a default you get the above items on your page, but you can add that like you wish.
The Feedback Type can be off: General comment, Enhancement Request or Bug.

If you look at the Page Process of the Feedback Page you will see the apex_util.submit_feedback package is used to get the data into Team Development.

The most right-side button is Feedback. When we click on that we see a dashboard of all the feedback for the applications in this workspace.

As you can see I entered 3 feedback comments, but I didn't treat the comments yet.
I can now convert the feedback into a bug, a to do entry or a feature.

We'll click on the Feedback tab and see all of the feedback. You have different views of this feedback, you can see open, closed or all and can see the feedback in Extended or Basic modus.

From this screen you click on a Feedback entry

You update the feedback entry and can change the status etc.

That is how I would go forward. I would let people test our migrated application and ask to enter their comments as Feedback. I, as a developer, would do the same. It gives me (and project manager and other developers for larger projects) and the customers insight in what has to be done and we can properly plan.

I didn't touch the Milestones, Features, To-Dos and Bugs, but it's worth to have a look at that aswell. It's all in Team Development.

WC2010 - DGTournament - hot

2010-06-12T08:58:00.004+02:00

Looking at the statistics you just know something happened yesterday... Yes! The World Cup 2010 started... it looks like people are competitive and care about their ranking ;-)

Three people betted the correct score of the first two games!
This is the top 3 so far at DG Tournament, all with equal points:
- Marco Gralike
- Szabolcs Horai
- Thomas Tomm

Concerning my bets... I almost had it right, but France didn't score and Mexico scored against... so 0 points. Hopefully my next bets are a bit better :-)

Benelux APEX 4.0 day - 20 places left

2010-06-11T09:17:00.002+02:00

Just a quick note to say there are 20 places left for the Benelux APEX 4.0 day on Thursday.
Great speakers, great topics, great audience... and a full day about APEX 4.0!

WC2010 - DGTournament - Prices to win

2010-06-11T08:55:00.004+02:00

I've the pleasure to announce we have some prices to win after all ;-)
You find the prices on the Rankings page of DG Tournament.

Today the World Cup 2010 starts, so if you didn't bet yet, you have a few hours left!
Registering on DG Tournament stays open (it has been open for over the last 4 years), so if you missed the first matches, you can still try to catch up with the others.

At the end I'm happy I enabled the World Cup 2010 football on DG Tournament, as it's way more exciting now ;-) I even bought the EA Sports game of the World Cup 2010! Not sure when I've time to play, but I already played it once in the weekend, and it's a very nice game.

Good luck to everybody! And that the best may win!

CD APEX 4.0: Utilities - Upgrade Application

2010-06-10T22:49:00.011+02:00

Almost time for the World Cup - don't forget your bets in DGT

2010-06-10T17:02:00.004+02:00

Only one day left and the World Cup 2010 football is kicking off!

Currently 259 people are trying to predict the games on DG Tournament.
You can still play with us, but you have to be quick ;-)

Some people said they couldn't bet on the games. In 99% of the cases this is due to the fact the World Cup 2010 is not selected in their profile. So login and go to Your Profile and make sure that in "Your tournament subscriptions" you selected "World Cup 2010", then click on the Apply Changes or Update Subscription button.

Good luck... and have fun!

CD APEX 4.0: Verifying imported application

2010-06-09T22:44:00.011+02:00

This blog post is part of a series posting "Count Down to APEX 4.0 Public Release" (click on link to view history).

Yesterday we imported our application in APEX 4.0. The import went fine, but we had some errors with the script in Supporting Objects.

So today I looked at the errors and fixed them were appropriate (mostly data issues). I used the SQL Data Workshop in APEX 4.0 to load the data manually. One issue I found was to import blob content. As you can upload your own picture in DG Tournament, this gets stored into a blob column. Also the image for the teams are stored in the database. But SQL Workshop or SQL Developer are not able to generate a script for that, so you will have to use SQL Loader or a custom PL/SQL procedure to get them loaded. I didn't do that yet.

Now that I'm happy with the back end, the first thing I want to try is run the application and see if it works... Click here and see how the DG Tournament application looks like in APEX 4.0.

So not bad at all... but not completely perfect either. E.g. we get a javascript error on the first page. Looking into that error is for another day.

Now I'm going to use a new feature of APEX 4.0: the Advisor. The Advisor will look at my application and tell me what is not correct. Cool he!?

In the navigation bar we click on the Application Utilities icon

We get to a page with a lot of nice utilities. It's not my goal to explain all of them in this blog post, but I'll use one, the Advisor. So we click on the Advisor button (bottom left).

We want to leave the default checks like that and click on the Perform button. As you can see the Advisor will check for Errors, Performance, Security etc.

We'll keep that running for some time. Depending the size of the application it can take seconds or minutes. Finally there are the results... It looks like I've some things to look at!

In APEX 4.0 I'm using the Advisor constantly. Whenever I finish a page I let the Advisor run for that page. Whenever I want to do a release I run the Advisor for the full application.
It would be nice if we could get this Advisor to run every night and get the outcome by mail the next morning. I didn't look yet if there's an API available to do this now, but a few people, including myself, mentioned this at EA1.

Back to the app, now it's time to verify the recommendations of the Advisor and adapt accordingly.

Tomorrow I'll use another exciting feature which you also find in Application Utilities (screenshot on this page)! Anybody wants to do a guess which feature I'll use?

DG Tournament update (4): Interactive Calendar

2010-06-08T23:29:00.004+02:00

I just added the posibility to view the calendar of the World Cup 2010 in different ways.

I created an Interactive Report, so you are able to do anything you want.
E.g. you can search for your favorite team, see the games per group etc.

I try to listen to what you are all saying ... I think I implemented all features now which where asked before, so if you have new ones ... ;-)

One thing on my todo is to get the Map working again and representing up-to-date data. A couple of years ago I integrated Google Map v2, but today there's already a v3, so I would like to get that in there instead.

CD APEX 4.0: Import APEX 3.2 app in 4.0

2010-06-08T20:34:00.000+02:00

This blog post is part of a series posting "Count Down to APEX 4.0 Public Release" (click on link to view history).

Yesterday we took an export of our application and included the script to create the database objects and data in the Supporting Objects of APEX.

So the only thing we need to do now is importing our application in APEX 4.0.
In the Application Builder click on the Import button and select the exported file.

The file will import into the APEX Repository.

Next we have to install the application, so click the Next button.
Select the parsing schema and how you want the Application Id assigned to it. Finally click the Install button which will install the application into your workspace.

When the installation of the application is finished, the wizard won't stop yet, as we have Supporting Objects included in the export file. So the wizards asks if you want to install these Supporting Objects as well. As we need the database objects and some data we click Next and make sure the Yes option is selected.

We get a confirmation message which asks if we are sure we want to go further with the install, so click Install.

The wizard comes back with the result of the install of the Supporting Objects.

In my case I got a few errors. When you click on the Install Summary button you can review the outcome.

Most of the errors were data related. It's a pity SQL Developer wasn't able to produce me a "correct" sql which just works.

In this case I prefer to build a new script, delete my objects in APEX 4.0 and rerun the script for creating the database objects. You don't need to install the full application again, as that was successfully installed. You can just upload your new file to SQL Workshop and run it from there.

To get data or database object from one database to another I prefer the methods in this order

datapump when possible (in my case I can't use it as I don't have direct access to the database of apex.oracle.com)
separate scripts for database objects and data
depending the size of the script upload to Supporting Objects or run manually
(for really big data sets you can't use APEX to upload your data)

So whenever you finished with the database objects and loading the data we can go further with real APEX 4.0 features... but that is for tomorrow.

CD APEX 4.0: Prepare application for upgrade

2010-06-07T21:59:00.013+02:00

This blog post is part of a series posting "Count Down to APEX 4.0 Public Release".

So let's start with preparing our application to move to APEX 4.0. As you probably will create a test instance with APEX 4.0 where you try your production application before "going live", I'm going to do the same. I'll use apex.oracle.com as my test instance of APEX 4.0.

The first thing I have to do, is to package my current application (APEX 3.2), so I can quickly go from my current server and install it on the APEX 4.0 test server.

I'll make use of the Supporting Objects feature in APEX to include all my database objects and data with my application (just like you have with a packaged application).

But before I can use it, I need a sql script with all my database objects and data. To get such a script I'll use SQL Developer (or you might already have the scripts in Subversion or so).

In SQL Developer I go to Tools - Export Database and I'll follow the wizard to include all my objects.

The final step will show you an overview of the objects it will include in the script.
Click the Finish button and wait for the script to generate.

Next you can upload this script into the Supporting Objects section of APEX.

In the Installation Scripts section you should see something like this

Next you can take an export of your application.

Save the file somewhere because tomorrow we are going to import it into APEX 4.0.
So stay tuned...

Count down to APEX 4 Public Release

2010-06-07T21:22:00.007+02:00

As the APEX Development team took the last step (upgrade of apex.oracle.com) in the production release of APEX 4.0, we can start to count down for the public release!

So I made a bet with myself... Every day till the public release of APEX 4.0 I'll blog about another new feature!

The way I'll do it, is simple: I'll migrate the DG Tournament application to APEX 4.0. DG Tournament is an existing application I originally wrote in 2006 and upgraded along the years with the new versions of APEX.

What do I hope to show you?

how to move from APEX 3.2 to APEX 4.0
show new ways of doing your development
rewrite existing (custom) functionalities by making use of build-in APEX 4.0 features
incorporate new features

I've no idea how much longer the public release will take, but there are over 170 new features in APEX 4.0, so I should be fine on that side. But maybe they will be really fast in shipping this release and I won't have enough time to get the app migrated... Time will tell...