APEX-Challenge.com

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.

APEX in the Cloud

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

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.

APEX Meetup @ OOW 2011

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...

New APEX Book - Expert Oracle Application Express

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! :-)

Oracle APEX 4.0 Cookbook

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!

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

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!

Call to the APEX Community - APEX Enhancement Requests

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 :-)

Fast writing of Queries with Joins in SQL Developer

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 Father is speaking ...

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.

DG Tournament update (3): Groups and Prices

I changed the Profile page in DG Tournament, so you can add a Group against your name.


I also changed the Bet Rank page so the group, location and country is included now.
You can also search on your group or break on it with the interactive rank page.


If you want to give something to the winner, you can sponsor the bets and in exchange you get your logo/name/link on the rankings page. It's all for fun, but with some prices we boost the adrenaline even a bit more ;-)

If you didn't do your bets yet, do it today as there are only 5 days left! 170 people already did...

APEX app as SaaS

As I blogged yesterday, I was working on making DG Tournament SaaS.
That is completed now :-)

Let's say ODTUG would like to offer all the conference people the ability to follow the World Cup 2010 in a fun way. So they see the scores, they can bet on the games and communicate with each other.


So what are the options for me to provide them with such a service:

• I could create a packaged application from an adapted version of DG Tournament and send to them so they put it on their server.
• I could copy the database schema and APEX app into a new schema and workspace and host it for them.
• I could keep using only one version of DG Tournament, but let it behave differently depending a parameter (url, key, ...).

They have all advantages and disadvantages, but my preference would be the last option. It would basically mean I provide DG Tournament as a Service (SaaS = Software as a Service).

The biggest advantages I see in this case are:

• only one version of the app to maintain (bug fixing, performance optimizations etc)
  
• only one time I need to fill in the scores
• minimal time to provide this service to another company (no copy of tables, apps etc. just a new record in the database)

So I changed DG Tournament that if somebody would be interested in this service, they could:

• have custom look (banner on top)
• if they click on the banner they go to your homepage
• if you login as an admin you can adapt the text of the homepage, so you could for ex. talk about the price for the winner
• the rankings and shoutbox are for your users alone, so nobody else will see what your people say and you have your own ranking

I put the example online here so you can see it in action!

DG Tournament update (2)

I just updated DG Tournament with a calendar as that was one of the requests.

The calendar is a nice example of a JQuery plugin. We use the same plugin on our Sumneva website to show our APEX Training calendar.


If you had to do this in APEX 4.0, you would probably use the new build-in calendar or write a plugin to create this calendar.

I put some more new enhancements in the app to make it more user-friendly. E.g. preselect the current tournament when registering and trying to predict the country you are from.

Some people asked for a "group" functionality... So far I told to use the location to provide a grouping. I didn't put in a real group field yet, but thought about it some more.
As one of the purposes of this application is to showcase what you can do with APEX, I went a step further! So I made some first steps to make the application "SaaS".
Basically it would allow me to give companies or persons the possibility to provide their customers and friends a site like DG Tournament, but with their look and feel.
I'll blog about that tomorrow probably, but if you are interested in something like that, drop me a mail.

Only 9 days left to the World Cup 2010!

New APEX Blog

APEX is taking off in the Benelux and so are the APEX Blogs.

Iloon Ellen-Wolff, working for Oracle Nederland, is helping to spread the word about APEX too. She also started to blog recently. It's worth to have a look at her blog. She's also presenting at the OBUG APEX SIG day of June 17th about the new Tabular Forms in APEX 4.0.

I just added her and some others blog to ApexBlogs.info. Currently apexblogs.info is capturing 84 blogs! Not all blogs are as active, but it shows APEX is getting more popular every day...

DGTournament ready for World Cup 2010: betting on games

It wasn't my initial intention to do so, but after having a lot of people asking for enabling the World Cup 2010 on DG Tournament I finally did it.

Four years ago I developed this application (in APEX). With Euro 2008 I made some changes, but from then on I didn't really touch it anymore. Four years is a long time and I saw that some services I used (e.g. to get the location based on the IP) got changed. I didn't completely update the app yet, but the bulk should work now.


I plan to do some more updates in the next days, but go already to the site and start registering yourself. If you already played before on the site, you can just login with those credentials.
If you find some bugs or want to give some feedback, please do so. Now there's still time to make the site better.

Would it be more fun if I include betting for (small) money? I like to keep the site free so everybody can use it, but maybe it's nice to give you the possibility to bet for e.g. 2 euro. Everybody who bets for money can win "the pot". I'm not sure what it means in terms of rights...

Have fun...

APEX 4.0 - Looking at Feedback through Team Development

In the previous blog post I posted how you can add a Feedback link to your own application. I didn't specify how you can retrieve the Feedback, but got a question about it from Stew. I thought it might be useful for others, so decided to do another post about it.

In APEX 4.0, there's a completely new section called Team Development.
Team Development allows you to specify Milestones, Features, To Does ... but also to look into the Feedback.


I see the Team Development as something that helps you to do Agile Development. It's just a first try of the APEX Development team, so not perfect yet, but it's a lot better than an Excel file or I don't know what else people tend to use for handling their projects. But Team Development is definetely something you might want to give a try.

If you click on the Feedback icon you see the Feedback the people entered and you can Follow this up and make it a Bug, a Feature etc. As the Feedback option capture a lot of APEX specific things (e.g. in which app and page you were), it makes it all a bit easier to understand what the person is logging and to reproduce at your (the developers) end.


Obviously everything is stored in the APEX Repository so you can do whatever you want with it. Another good example if you want to see what you can do with it, is the APEX 4.0 Early Adopter feedback application itself. That app also sends a mail whenever feedback got updated.

APEX 4.0: Feedback link

APEX is written in APEX, so all feature you see in APEX you can do in your application as well.

One of the nice things in APEX 4.0 is Team Development and a way to get customer feedback.


To enable such a Feedback link in your application you have to do the following:

1) Create the Feedback Page


2) Edit the Application Attributes and Allow Feedback


3) Create a Feedback Navigation Link


4) In the Page Template, the APEX Development team already foresaw a #FEEDBACK# token, so I guess they want to give you control how and where the Feedback link is shown. However I couldn't get that to work yet, so that is still work in progress.


I believe this is a very useful feature... we actually already build such a functionality for our APEX 3.x applications, so it's nice to see it will be part of APEX itself in the future.

In memory of Scott Spadafore

The world stopped turning for a moment when the sad news came out of Scott Spadafore.

It's aweful to lose a person you know, especially one you look up to. Scott was very, very helpful to anybody. He has the most posts on the APEX Forum and never went for the easy route. He helped people till they really got it and the issue was solved. He's also the person who did a lot of the security in APEX. I remember Carl liked to call him "THE" man. But next to his knowledge I admired Scott because he could put the things in proportion and he always seemed to take things with a smile.

This picture was taken in 2007 at Open World. Scott is in the middle.


The last picture I could find was one from last Oracle Open World where Scott was talking to John at the APEX Meetup.


We will miss you Scott. Our thoughts are with you, your family and your friends.

ODTUG Kaleidoscope schedule available now

Just a quick note to say the ODTUG Kaleidoscope conference schedule is published now.
There's a double APEX track scheduled... Delaware A and B are the rooms to go to if you want to see APEX 4.0 and so much more!