Oracle APEX Forum - Week 39

*** After a long time, I finally said to myself to start this Oracle Application Express Forum Wrap-up again ***

My goal is to put some links to the forum that took my attention in the last week. Sometimes these posts made me laugh, sometimes they made me cry and some of them I found really interesting.

The most interesting topics:

• APEX 3.0.1 installation on Vista: A step-by-step guide to install Oracle Application Express on Windows Vista
• Patrick posted some possible Bugs: here, here and here. They are all about Select Lists
• Already heard about Extjs. There's a nice (long) thread on the integration of that with APEX. For me this is just another 3rd party product integration. In APEX it's easy to do that. I integrated for ex. Yahoo and Google widgets. There're so many, nevertheless I wanted to include it in here...
• Dynamically change Report Template: it's not really because of the report template I include it, but there's a nice technique John and I've been using to reuse queries.
• How to Post Data from Outside Oracle using APEX Application? Really strange some people would like to do it, but I also got this question at one of my customers... so apparently it's more asked.
• Value too long: The length of a form item can only be 32512 bytes. There's a workaround, which Carl Backstrom wrote.
  
• How Store and Enlarge Images In APEX: I didn't look at the forum for some time now, due to my new born baby, but I was surprised to see a link to my blog ;-)
• Empty PDF files generated within APEX 3.0: hmm I think I also got this once when I was doing a presentation. Localizations is very tricky sometimes!
• APEX Line Calendar: Patrick Haston made a nice solution for such calendars
• Problems with APEX & BI Publisher: report column amount limit and text item with %
  

Announcements:

• none

If you saw something in the forums I should have included, you're free to put a comment.

APEX Forum - Week 21

My goal is to put some links to the forum that took my attention in the last week. Sometimes these posts made me laugh, sometimes they made me cry and some of them I found really interesting.

The most funny posts:

• APEX API - interface description: Some developers have a hard time to implement APEX in their environment. How secure do you want it to be?
• Windows Express 3.0 Bug?: Sometimes users are confused about names... APEX, XE, Windows, Oracle database, 10g some many words, so many differences
• Loading images!!!!: How to ask a question? Or better how not to ask a question! Ofcourse the message was clear, but why so many !!!
  

The most interesting topics:

• SOLVED - Apex + Cocoon = Blank Page?: Sometimes the solution is in the details
• Generate PDF report with HTML data: How to display the content of a CLOB field containing html tags correctly in a pdf generated by BI Publisher.
• Blog or Wiki applications built using APEX: Carl Backstrom started with a wiki application here, but it's not yet finished. I started with a blog application which you find here, also not finished yet.
• Cookies and sessions: Apps must belong to the same workspace in order to be able to share sessions.
• Using Oracle Text with Apex: Do you want to highlight your searched text, then have a look at this thread
  

Announcements:

• IE Developer Toolbar out of beta: Posted by Peter Lorenzen, you find the tool here
  

Tips:

• Date picker location: When you want to customize the calendar pop-up you can use a DHTML calendar as shown here
  
• Creating an index of all pages in the application: It shows again that the APEX dictionary is very powerful but not that known at the moment.
  

If you saw something in the forums I should have included, you're free to put a comment.

APEX Forum - Week 20

My goal is to put some links to the forum that took my attention in the last week. Sometimes these posts made me laugh, sometimes they made me cry and some of them I found really interesting.

The most funny posts:

• Application Express as front end: can APEX be used as the front-end for your Oracle database? Yeah right...
• Two times somebody confused John with Scott: European APEX Training and Using Word Verification On Registration Page
  

The most interesting topics:

• When users open links in a new window: no solution yet for the problem of mixing up data from one session and multiple data. Interesting to see how this evolves...
• how to create a workflow (not a wizard): if you want to see the flow of the process (different screens) there's an example in that thread
• How to use multiselect list in tabular form: this is not out-of-the-box, it needs some coding
• APEX and BPEL: two posts: here and here (no replies yet)
  

Announcements:

• New (updated) Discussion Forum packaged app: here
• Master-Detail PDF Report: how to and sample app
• ODTUG APEX Meet-up: during ODTUG Kaleidoscope we organized another APEX Meet-up
  
• European APEX Training: the first training organized by the Apex Evangelists in Brussels (September 4-6): direct link to the training information page here
  

Tips:

• A nice example page of the new Flash Charts in APEX 3.0
• All the APEX How to's: here
  

If you saw something in the forums I should have included, you're free to put a comment.

APEX Forum - Week 19

My goal is to put some links to the forum that took my attention in the last week. Sometimes these posts made me laugh, sometimes they made me cry and some of them I found really interesting.

The most funny posts:

• BI solutions by apex: Funny the way that "brother" talks

The most interesting topics:

• Can the embedded PL/SQL gateway handle SSL?: and yes is the answer!
  
• Open Source Flash Tools: It started with regular Flash and ended up with a discussion about Adobe Flex. We at AE are trying to integrate Adobe Flex with APEX. A result of that should be available in three weeks.
• Ajax - Query by Example: another Denes Kubicek example of something that comes back regularly in the forums
• New How-to on using the XML DB HTTP Server for APEX: Peter Lorenzen created some nice documents about this topic in the APEX wiki
• If you've seen some more interesting topics, please let me know...
  

Announcements:

• None

Tips:

• STATIC vs STATIC2 in static LOV definition: One sorts values alphabetically (STATIC) and the other sorts in the order in which they are written (STATIC2)
  

APEX Forum - Week 18

My goal is to put some links to the forum that took my attention in the last week. Sometimes these posts made me laugh, sometimes they made me cry and some of them I found really interesting.

The most funny posts:

• ApEx vs ASP.NET AJAX: a discussion about what's better... the initial poster has also some things he would like to see improved.
• Authorization Scheme checking before login: Especially this sentence: "That loud noise you heard was me slapping my forehead and saying "D'OH"."
  

The most interesting topics:

• Export Excel instead of .csv: another way of implementing the export to Excel (via html tables instead of separated file) - thanks to Denes Kubicek for this package - now available unwrapped.
• Changing Icon in a Report using javascript: another test of Denes
• TRICK: Dynamic Item Help Text as Tooltip: instead of clicking on an item label to get help, this thread describes how to show the help as a tooltip.
• Handle ORA- errors: Already got a nice red box in APEX when an error occurred? this thread discuss how to solve that.
• No content in files through BI Publisher: some have problems with the integration of BI Publisher and APEX. Some hints in this thread.
  

Announcements:

• Standalone BI Publisher is now available for Windows: here
• Joel Kallman (APEX development team) becomes Oracle ACE: here
  

APEX Forum - Week 17

As I already told in my previous post, I registered again in the APEX forum. After one week and having posted 60 answers it's time for my first "wrap-up".

My goal is to put some links to the forum that took my attention. Sometimes these posts made me laugh, sometimes they made me cry and some of them I found really interesting.

The most funny posts:
- Deploying APEX through an .exe/.bat file: When you don't know Oracle, this is a normal question I think... Some people start using Oracle XE and make some APEX applications. Then they want to give it to their customers/friends/... In VB for ex. you would make an exe file, but APEX is different. How do you get your app via a cd to somebody else? Not easy... that would be an enhancements request. "Oracle XE 11g-to-go"?
It would be cool to have: Unzip, make your app, rezip - done with packaging!
- Urgent! Please help ...: (especially during the weekends) always funny to see these kind of questions! They can give Apex Evangelists a call when it's really urgent ;-)

The most interesting topics I participated in (top 5):
- DBMS_SQL_INJECTION_ANALYZER: It's not released (yet) and I couldn't find anything relevant on google, but it would be a nice to have; checking if your App is secure.
- Save page when clicking on another tab: Some users forget to click the Update or Apply Changes button, but they changed something in the form. With javascript you can ask the user if he wants to save it or not.
- APEX 3.1 Enhancements: you can use this thread to ask for enhancements request in the next version of APEX
- Better export to Excel: Denes Kubicek made a direct export from APEX to Excel available some time ago
- SSO and LDAP: different authentication methods... also smartcard!