OOW - Apex evening

Well, everything got finally arranged... I just received the registration confirmation of my first Oracle Open World. I really liked my first stay in the United States; ODTUG in Washington... Now I'm looking forward to visit San Francisco and meet my online Oracle friends in "real life"!

I didn't manage to get a direct flight from Brussels to SF, so I'll spent some minutes in Chicago ;-)
On October 20, somewhere in the evening, I'll cross the streets of SF for the first time...
Almost all hotels near the Moscone Center were fully booked, so I'm staying in the "Best Western Grosvenor Hotel SFO", 380 South Airport Boulevard, South San Francisco, CA 94080.
Somebody else staying there too?

I'm currently looking what to do in the evenings. This is what I already planned:
- Sun 22/10 at 7pm: "Welcome Reception" at Yerba Buena Gardens and Howard Street
- Mon 23/10 at 7pm: "OTN Night (or OTN Underground)" at the Marriott Hotel, Yerba Buena Level and sumptuous Westin St. Francis in Union Square
- Tue 24/10 at 7pm: "OOW2006 Blogger Meetup", organized by Mark Rittman in the "Thirsty Bear Brewing Company", just around the corner from the Moscone. Afterwards there's also the Appreciation Event with sir Elton John.
- There will also be a "Belgium evening" together with Oracle Belgium, but that's not yet planned. Update: Benelux Cocktailparty - Mon 23/10 6pm-9pm
- John Scott and I are also organizing an "OOW APEX meetup" evening! You can subscribe here. The post in the APEX forum is here, initially started by Joel Kallman.

APEX patch 2.2.1

A patch for Oracle Application Express 2.2 is released on the 14th of September.

This release fixes several issues in Application Express 2.2, you find the details below. The full installation of Application Express 2.2.1 can be downloaded from the OTN Site. The Application Express 2.2.1 patch set, to be applied to an Application Express 2.2 instance, can be downloaded from MetaLink (Patch Number 5500033) and is about 2.6MB.

To install the patch:
- sqlplus "sys/syspass as sysdba" @apxpatch.sql
- Copy the images/javascript/htmldb_html_elements.js file to the images/javascript directory used for Application Express. The version of htmldb_html_elements.js included in the patch set should overwrite the existing file.

It took me less than two minutes to apply the patch and it worked great :-)

If you're working with Application Express 2.2 and XE, you should read this.

The table below contains a list of the bugs fixed with the Oracle Application Express 2.2.1.00.04 release.
Bug Nr Description
5441709 Substitutions Not Respected In HTML Form Element Attributes
5442085 Item Buttons Do Not Show On Page Definition Page
5459267 Substitution Message Is Not Displayed While Importing Application Export File.
5473520 Calendar Does Not Render Correctly When Day Link Contains Substitutions
5478895 Creating A Form And Report On A Table Does Not Respect Report Region Name
5442111 Creating Breadcrumbs Does Not Consistently Use Breadcrumb Region
5453208 Missing Indexes On Apex_Mail Log Tables
5463785 Reordering Report Columns Jumbles Show Checkbox
5485723 Post Element Text Is Not Included In A Page XLIFF Translation File
5485866 Unable To Delete Messages From APEX_MAIL_QUEUE
5496804 Some Item Types Apply Label Attributes To The Form Item
5499606 Misspellings In Apex Views Columns And Comments
5499948 Build Option Utilization Report Raises Exception
5503306 Page Radio Items With Names > 30 Characters Cause Page Failures In Some Cases
5412152 PL/SQL: Numeric Or Value Error In Supporting Objects When Switching Editor
5439073 Prerequisite Check For CREATE TYPE System Privilege Always Fails
5439502 WWV_FLOW_CLICKTHRU_LOG Missing Corresponding APEX_DICTIONARY Views
5452033 Display As Text (Based On LOV) Items Cannot Handle Non-Numeric Extra Values
5453543 Unable To Edit Parameters In Process Of Type Web Service
5469015 Authentication Fails On Popup Item Help Pages
5479160 Generate DDL Functionality Fails In 9iR2 Databases
5493470 Application Builder Page Definition Page Does Not Show Build Options
5494575 Named List Of Values In APEX_APPLICATION_PAGE_RPT_COLS View Is Always Null
5443026 Reordering Report Columns Does Not Adjust Sort Check Boxes
5518829 Unable to Use Date Picker on TIMESTAMP in tabular form

Updateable view

Although this feature already exist a long time in Oracle, I'd like to share my experience using "updateable views" together with APEX.

My situation
I've a table "Teams", a table "Team Groups" and a table "Team Team Groups" (which teams are in which groups - many/many relationship).

While I was inputting the Champions League teams I had to
1. input into table Teams
2. input into table Team Team Groups

To speed up the inserts in an APEX application, you wouldn't create two insert pages (one per table), but only one page which handles the inserts for you. You can for ex. write some (APEX form) processing which will insert the data into the two tables or tell all items to which table they belong and adapt the standard processing.

I didn't use any of these, I did the insert through a view... I built an APEX tabular form on top of the view and had my GUI very quick and easy!

An updateable view exists of a regular view and an "instead of" trigger...

My view
SELECT t.team_id, t.team_name, t.image_id, t.team_comment, t.is_active, g.team_group_id
FROM tdg_team t, tdg_team_team_group g
WHERE t.team_id = g.team_id;

My trigger
CREATE OR REPLACE TRIGGER tdg_vw_teams_groups_ioi_trg
INSTEAD OF INSERT ON tdg_vw_teams_groups
DECLARE
BEGIN
INSERT INTO tdg_team
(team_id, team_name, image_id, team_comment, is_active)
VALUES (:NEW.team_id, :NEW.team_name, :NEW.image_id, :NEW.team_comment, :NEW.is_active);
INSERT INTO tdg_team_team_group
(team_id, team_group_id)
VALUES (:NEW.team_id, :NEW.team_group_id);
END tdg_vw_teams_groups_ioi_trg;

Almost the same for Update and Delete...

To see if the view is really updateable, run this statement
SELECT column_name, updatable, insertable, deletable
FROM user_updatable_columns
WHERE table_name = 'TDG_VW_TEAMS_GROUPS';

My insert statement
INSERT INTO tdg_vw_teams_groups
(team_id, team_name, team_comment, image_id, is_active, team_group_id)
VALUES (tdg_team_seq.NEXTVAL, 'Shakhtar', NULL, NULL, 1, 1011);

I found it very useful to speed up my inserts like this and this solution also works from SQL Plus, SQL Developer, etc.

I'm back!

After two weeks of honeymoon in Mauritius I'm back in Belgium...

We booked the One & Only Le Touessrok hotel. We can recommended Mauritius and this hotel in particular to everyone! We had a wonderful honeymoon and were treated as royalties!
We stayed in the Junior Suite 283 on the Frangipani Island. One word: "Luxe".
I can write pages of our stay, but I suppose this isn't interesting enough for everybody ;-) You find some more information and pictures of the hotel here.

Mauritius, for me, has two faces... The local people are not that rich and they don't have so much luxury as we know in Europe. They work hard on the fields (sugar, textile) or they fish to survive. Next to that you've the tourism. They literally created a "dream world": island, white beaches, crystal blue water, very nice weather, palm tries and they treat a tourist as a royalty! (tourism is an other important why of getting an income)

So, now a question for you! Any news in the Oracle world in the past two weeks?

Not alone anymore!

I'm not alone anymore... I'm called a "man" from now on ;-) My girl friend is gone, she became my wife.
My pc will get a bit jealous as she (it) won't get a lot of attention for the rest of August, because I'm going on honeymoon!

The pictures are showing the destination... yes, Mauritius!

I hope I'll get there, as British Airways cancelled there flights to/from Brussels today!

Peek on Follow-up WC2006 app

Here 're some screenshots from the follow-up of the APEX WC2006 application.














On the left side, the proposition of the graphic designer. At the right side, how I implemented it at this stage. The application is still in an early development phase... but I already want to give you an idea what my next application looks like.

Like you can see on the pictures, the application will be about tournaments. Not only football. The principle stays the same as in the APEX WC2006 application; the application must be "interactive"; it will allow betting on the scores and discussing about the tournament. But that's not all, it will allow you to create your own tournaments, users participating in teams etc.

On a technical level; the application will be entirely written in APEX 2.2 and it will try to include "all" available features of APEX. Some additional javascript and AJAX will be used too ;-)

I can't give you a date yet when the application will be available... probably somewhere in October. In August I won't have a lot of time as you'll see in an other post.

APEX Packaged Applications

Oracle released some packaged applications (APEX example applications) on OTN.

Following are already available:

• APEX Discussion Forum
• Aria People Search
• Shuttle Demo (created by Carl Backstrom, member of the APEX Dev Team)

Others will follow soon...

I'm finalizing my database design of the "next" APEX WC2006 app. I also discussed the lay-out with my "graphic wonder"... I'll post some screenshots soon :-)

SQL Developer usefull?

I just saw Oracle released the Statement of Direction for SQL Developer on OTN.
In the document you'll find some features planned for the next releases.

I'm sure SQL Developer can help any APEX developer.
Some of the features I think we miss in SQL Workshop, but are/will be available in SQL Dev:

• SQL & PL/SQL beautifier
• Explain plan support
• Autotrace support

Sue Harper, Product Manager of SQL Developer, blogged some screenshots of new features here.

APEX 2.2 installation

The installation of APEX 2.2 went smooth!


The steps I did:

- Desktop
1. Downloading the apex_2.2.zip file from OTN
2. Transferring the file from my desktop to my unix server

- Server (HP-UX, DB 9.2.0.6, APEX 2.0 installed)
3. Unzip apex_2.2.zip
4. Run sqlplus "sys/... as sysdba"
5. SQL> @apexins password apex_data apex_data temp /i/ none
6. After 36 minutes I got the screen as you can see on your right side
7. SQL> @$ORACLE_HOME/rdbms/admin/utlrp
8. Backup image 2.0 directory
9. Copy new image (2.2) directory to previous location


10. Test in browser
11. It works perfectly, all my previous workspaces were migrated


What happened in the database?
- Creation of FLOWS_020200 schema
- Space utilization of around 100 MB extra

APEX 2.2 in production

As of yesterday, Oracle Application Express 2.2 is in production!

You can download it from the APEX OTN site here. You can see APEX 2.2 working here.

Although it's only an increase in release after the "." there're some great new features!

Although I like all the new features, this is my top 3:

1. Copy a Page from Another Application
You can now copy a page from one application into another. During the copy process, you can also copy referenced shared components or change the mappings to shared components in the target application.

2. Timestamp datatype support
In release 2.2, you can build forms and calendars on tables that have columns of type TIMESTAMP.

3. Component-level Export
You can now export shared components or components of a page. You can use this new feature to backup a component before editing or to create an export that functions as a patch to another Oracle Application Express instance.

APEX WC2006 app - Thanks

Well, it's over... Italy won the World Cup 2006!

The APEX WC2006 application was a great success. More than 420 people subscribed for the application and a lot of them kept betting till the final.

I found it a lot of fun! It was more special to look at the games, hoping the score would be like I predicted. If 1 minute before the final whistle the other team marked a goal, I don't need to tell you what words were said ;-) It even got an other dimension when I was staying in the States and I saw the other betters... I never imagined the application would have such an impact.

I would like to thank you all for the great feedback, the feature requests (which made the application better) and for playing with us.

Some special thanks:
- to my parents, for backing me up and filling in the scores right after the end of the game!
- to Kristel Geukens from G&G Design for helping me with the lay-out of the site and supporting me.
- to Jes (John Scott) from Shellprompt for the nice cooperation, the hosting and the excellent support! Jes posted also some feedback on his blog here.

What's next?
Well, a lot of people asked for something similar for Euro 2008 and the World Cup 2010. I suppose I can't reside on that demand ;-) Maybe you'll even see something earlier...

APEX 2.2 test and evaluation instance upgrade

Yesterday I posted that I didn't hear a lot of Oracle... my words weren't yet cold or I received a mail from the APEX Dev Team:

--
Last Friday, we upgraded our Oracle Application Express 2.2 test and evaluation instance. The code is now very close to production.

Thank you all for giving us feedback. We have read and responded to almost all comments. Many of your suggestions have been implemented in this release or are logged for consideration in 3.0. Please continue to comment and especially comment if you find a bug or what you think might be a bug.

Lastly, if you like something in Apex 2.2 would you consider providing a quote? You can comment on Apex in general or version 2.2 specifically. We need just a few quotes for our upcoming press release. If you really like Apex, this is your chance to tell the world. If you are interested, email your comment(s) along with you name, company name and contact information to htmldbstudio_us@oracle.com.

Thanks again -
The Oracle Application Express Development Team
--

These're the quotes I sent:
My quote 1: "“APEX, my true and only development environment!”"
My quote 2: "“APEX is FUN, this is proven by the big success of my World Cup application, completely written in APEX!”

I hope they select one of my quotes! ;-)

Oracle silence

I didn't see a lot of news about Oracle and APEX in the last days.

The Oracle stocks are doing fine (see picture - evolution of last 6 months).

On the APEX site, the evaluation version 2.2 is still available. The APEX VP of Oracle said that after handling all feedback, the 2.2 release would be available to the public, first on http://apex.oracle.com afterwards as a download.

On Tuesday, I gave an overview of the presentations I followed at ODTUG to my team. They found it interesting topics and asked if the presentations were available as download. You can download the ODTUG presentations till the first of August on the ODTUG site.

Yesterday I went to a bbq of Edison, a publicity company in Leuven, BE. A few times a year they do an event with the employees, freelances and clients. My girl friend works as freelance for them and I could join her. It had nothing to do with Oracle, but it was interesting to see and hear how they see the market. They knew Oracle, but only from the logo and how they make publicity! I had an interesting conversation with Philip Maes, a known guy in the publicity world, about the different ways to make publicity. Doing pub on the radio is very different than doing pub on tv or in magazines. Although I didn't learn anything technical, it was very interesting to be there! And it was FUN!

Back in Belgium...

Before we took the flight back home, we went to the Washington (National) Zoo. I took a lot of pictures, especially the apes I liked most! ;-) You find the last pictures I took in the USA here.

The Washington Dulles airport is so big, but we finally managed to get in the plane. I'm currently writing this story on seat 34B in a Boeing 767.
When you think about it, it's now 3 o'clock in the night/morning in Belgium. I suppose I'll be tired when I'll arrive!
Although I'll really miss the States, I'm happy to see my girlfriend again. I had a nice time in the States, when she stayed alone in Belgium and prepared our marriage...

To end my trip, these're my last words: "Thanks ODTUG! DC, I'll always keep you in my heart!"

Dimitri

ODTUG - P5: APEX, SQL Developer, Winning presentations

I regret it's already Wednesday! The last day at ODTUG!
It was my first time I visited the US and also my first time at this conference. I must say I really liked to be in the States. If I describe my first impressions of the US; nice and friendly people, everything is thought in *big* terms, 1/2l drinks refillable, too good and too big portions of food, I love DC.

I also want to make my complements to the board of ODTUG! This seminar was excellent; a lot of high level presentations, friendly and helpful people, a conference for "the best" of the world...


Here're the latest seminars I followed:

1. Use Google Maps in APEX by Michael Snyder
We got a detailed explanation how you can integrate Google Maps with APEX. I found it a good and clear presentation. You can find more information (whitepaper, example) about the application here.

2. SQL Developer by Sue Harper
Sue gave us a quick overview of SQL Developer and also showed the new features. She also told that Oracle will keep investing in this product and that they really listen to us. The more we say we would like to have in SQL Developer, the more it will be likely this feature will become available. Especially the plugins are useful, as this means that you can do almost everything with the product, just add another plugin with the feature you want. The only problem today is that there'ren't a lot of plugins (yet).
A next release of SQL Developer (1.1) will become available last half of CY 2006. Version 1.2 is foreseen for first half of CY 2007.
These're the features we may expect in v1.1:
- Increase basic functionality
- Update object browsing and navigation
- Increase search capabilities
- Increase SQL and PL/SQL editing support
- Add file based PL/SQL support
Features for later versions:
- Visual Query builder
- Version Control support
- Increased Explain plan support
- Developer related tuning capabilities
- Visual Data modeling

3. Giving winning presentations by Rich Niemiec
This was the second presentation I followed of Rich and it was for the second time excellent!
Here're some of the things he said:
- Great presentations are painful to build
- Care about your audience
- Use visuals to get them to remember
- Teach to multiple levels and repeat things
- You'll do great things if you care!

4. You can't do THAT with a browser! by Scott Spendolini
Scott gave us some demo's of following cool things you can add to your APEX application:
- Ajax Select List
- Ajax Memory List
- Enhanced HTML Editor; integrating the FCK Editor
- PDF Report
Ajax is really cool, it gives you a better UI experience and extend the HTML language greatly, but there're also some drawbacks: the development time is higher, more code, so more bugs and compatibility issues with different browsers and more security issues.
How you can integrate the FCK Editor can be found in the APEX forum, Guido Zeelen created a step-for-step guide.
The PDF Report that Scott showed us, was made with PL/PDF. He also told us that XML Publisher can be a good choice too. More information about both methods to generate PDF documents can you easily find on the net.

5. Integrating Oracle APEX with eBusiness Suite by Scott Spendolini
For this session I was the ambassador. This means that you introduce the speaker, supply the hands-outs, get the feedback forms and see that everything runs smooth.
I was proud I could introduce Scott. I was lucky to follow his presentations and had several chats with him, so I could know him a bit better. He's a great guy!

6. An extra session - Panel to discuss APEX by Michael Hichwa, Oracle APEX VP and Scott Spendolini
The Vice President of Oracle, Michael Hichwa, gave us more information about the new features in v2.2 and v3.0 which would normally become available in Feb. 2007.
Some of the features we may expect:
- a page export functionality (cross workspace)
- possibility to cach pages
- integration with XML Publisher
- drag-and-drop feature
- better clientside validations
- more integration with AJAX.

I suppose I don't need to tell you anymore I really adore APEX. Although I work already for several years with APEX, I hope I can spend more time with the tool. I didn't have any professional project so far which was *pure* APEX. I use APEX a lot in my freetime and I promote it with every client I come with.

I also hope to share more of my knowledge in the APEX community. Currently I'm speaking with the APEX development team to improve the WC 2006 application and put it as a sample application on Source Forge. The board of ODTUG also asked me if I was interested to give a presentation next year and write something for the ODTUG magazine. Next year is still far away, but I'll do my best to create something and hopefully it will be good enough to be accepted!

I'm happy I followed ODTUG. I knew a lot people from the internet (forums, blog, mail). When you've the chance to meet them in real life is great! Our (IT) world is really small, so you should cherish your network!

So, back to that day. After saying everybody goodbye we went to ChinaTown, but it wasn't that impressive as I imagined... we also had some food and drinks in an English pub. There I saw a parasol of Belgium, even stronger, from Leuven, the place where I live! The world is small...

The pictures of the day you can find here.

ODTUG - P4: PL/SQL Testing, Web development

I'll not blog a lot of technical things from the sessions I followed on Tuesday, only an overview. My good friends of AMIS will post some info about these sessions.

After being for four days in the States (Washington) I'm a bit tired. The other days I woke up at 6 o'clock after having a bad sleep... but today I slept till 7.50! Nevertheless I was more tired than before, so no fitness today.

After having my breakfast and being on the photo with the Dorsey brothers (Paul and Roger, great people btw) I followed following sessions:

1. Six Steps to Unit Testing Happiness by Steven Feuerstein
This was an excellent presentation of the PL/SQL guru. He stressed that testing should be done in the very beginning. You should write your test plan and tests before you do the actual coding.
He showed the latest tool he created to test a PL/SQL application, Qute, now bought by Quest Software, but his version is also available free of charge! If you like more an Open Source flavor of testing software, you can look at utPLSQL (also written by S.F. some years ago).
Six simple steps to unit testing:
1. Describe fully the required functionality of the program.
2. Elaborate the test cases for the program
3. Define the header of the program
4. Build test code that implements all test cases
5. Write the program unit
6. Test, debug, fix, test, debug, fix, ...

2. No, Carry, We're STILL Not Tuning the Right Stuff by Mogens Norgaard akà Moens Longballs Nogood
This presentation will be "bloged" by Alex of AMIS. Mogens talked about the evolution of tuning. The whole presentation was blended with humor. You just need to know him, or seen him once to understand what a great guy he it! Well done Mr. Nogood!

3. Oracle's Advanced Analytics in the Database by Bob Haverstrob
Data Mining... analytical functions... it was all about that. I don't have real experience in the Data Mining area, so I didn't understand everything he was doing. This presentation wasn't my favorite one, I suppose there'll be somebody else blogging about it.

4. Web Services Reality Check: A Practical Guide to using Webservices today by Tugdual Grall
This presentation gave an overview of the evolution of the technology behind webservices. He also explained the difference in SOAP and REST. A demo with JDeveloper showed that it isn't that difficult to create or use a webservice.

5. Quick Web Development Using JDeveloper 10g by Matt Topper
I read the notes of this presentation which I found really interesting. I only went for 1 min. to this presentation as I was really tired from all the information of the other sessions, the match England-Sweden was busy too. ;-) Next to that I'll probably won't use JDev in the near future. But I was interested to see the notes to have a thought about the evolution in this area, as I made an application with JDev 4 years ago...

6. Building Robust Applications in a Database-Centric Way by Toon Koppelaars
Again an excellent presentation! My congratulations Toon!
I completely agree with Toon to put as much as possible in the database. If this is the case, all the latest technologies are just UI's (User Interfaces). If you use .NET, PHP, JAVA or APEX, it doesn't really matter as by every means you connect to the database, the logic to get the required data is the same (for ex. via an API). All business and data logic are in the database and reachable via an API, so if next year a XYZ technology comes out, it's easy to use it.
A lot of people try to create an application that is database independent. But that's just the biggest mistake they can make, as the database is the more stable and robust part of the whole. A database changes not that frequently, as you compare it with the latest technology. At the moment AJAX is hot, maybe in 3 years it will be PSV ;-) Oracle will always be the same...

In the evening we had a nice party with some great food and nice music. The Capitol Steps were the surprise of the evening. They gave a show, including singing, dancing, but most of the time making (political) jokes. There was one sketch with a geek... really funny, even as a not-American I laught a lot!

The pictures of the day you can find here.

ODTUG - P3: APEX Q&A, 10g Security & Tuning

The real start shot is given at ODTUG today (Monday). A lot of interesting parallel sessions during the day... it's a pity that I *must* choose!

My first session: Oracle Application Express (HTMLDB) Panel (Moderator: Scott Spendolini)

This was an interactive session about APEX. We could ask questions to a team of four persons: Scott Spendolini, Michael Snyder, Greg Jarmiolowski and Patrick Cimolini. They all had different kind of experience using APEX. Most experienced, of course, was Scott.

The audience was very lively! Here're some of the questions which get fired:

1. Is APEX a toy or is it a real development environment?
They all agreed that APEX is a real development environment and serious business. From little to big application. Scott Spendolini: "The creation of Metalink in APEX says it all. Oracle would never create something so big if it would disappear..."
Michael Snyder from CASEtech also explained what they have been doing in their firm. They redeveloped all their forms applications in APEX.

2. How much effort does it take to learn APEX?
Patrick Cimonline from Cayman Islands Government told about what he did with his team (some COBOL developers). In no time they worked with APEX! You can read more about this on Scott's Blog.
Scott told a good one too! The record to build an application is 15 minutes! Basically an Oracle sales consultant went to a customer, were he took a specific Excel of them and put that in APEX. The client immediate said, Ok, let it there - it was production -.

3. A comment from the audience that some "Error Messages" in APEX aren't yet translated in other languages.
To make the APEX dev team aware of it, we all should log about it in Metalink, the more the better!

4. APEX in production? And what are the security issues?
Take attention:
- to not display debug information
- to lock development down for developers - in prod - (= do a "run-only" deployment)
- http before firewall, db after
- redirect admin login to workspace screen
- secure session state (url)
- Use best practices
Depends on application; secure or not, internal or not
VPD, SSL, ...

5. Are there some best practices for APEX?
Here're some things you can look at:
- business rules in packages instead of anonymous rules
- simple validation via APEX, complex validation through packages
- use of updateable views
- bp of forms can be used for APEX
The data model is really important. APEX is about 90% preparation and 10% painting!!

6. How to work with Reports in APEX?
There's a whitepaper available of Scott (see OTN).

7. What about a version control system in/together with APEX?
You can do an export of your application and put it into cvs.
Scott makes an export every day of his schema/workspace via an automatic script (example how to do it on OTN and APEX studio, search for window job). Next to that, as everything is in the database you can use your backup strategy for ex. once a week taking a cold backup.

8. On the ODTUG website how does the download of the docs work.
Store the blob's in your own schema/tables and use the standard functionality of APEX.

9. What about PDF's in APEX?
Some possibilities:
- PL/PDF: good; cheap, pl/sql no Oracle AS needed, but contra; pl/sql api, a lot of code, no gui to develop the layout...
- Reports,
- 3rd Party reporting tool. I use for ex. CutePdf
- XML Publisher, see speech of Mark Rittman on ODTUG
- It's foreseen that Oracle will include something to create pdf's in the 3.0 release.

10. What about really big projects... Do you use a methodology? or Way of working?
Apparently at Oracle they had some discussions about including a sort of cvs... but they decided not to do it as it would be too complicated.
You should have good understandings with each other and communicate. In APEX you can use for ex. Page locks to prevent working on the same pages.
In version 2.2 or 3.0 there'll probably be some more features (cross application page export etc.)

11. What about the hype round Fusion?
The choice between using Java or PL/SQL depends on your inhouse talent. Webservices for ex. are also possible with pl/sql.

12. % of using PL/SQL packages, standard APEX, custom features (javascript, css)?
Depends on project and customer.

13. XML? XPath - not out of the box
This should be improved, but it's already possible to do it yourself. There 'll be a talk about this later on at ODTUG. (Google MAP - xml + javascript)

14. Interface improvements?
in 3.0 AJAX (drop down column etc.)

15. Why APEX?
In the news was something about a stolen laptop. In the Access app were some important personal information (of more than 10.000 persons!). This shows again that you should use something else for critical applications! I'm saying... APEX for ever!! But hey, I'm completely Oracle minded ;-)


I also followed some other sessions...

There was the scary presentation of Donald Burleson about Oracle 10g Privacy Security Auditing Techniques. Don explained very well, with lots of tonation, what could go wrong... The part, I found was missing, were the solutions to handle all these threads!
I suppose it's in one of his books (he gave some away for free, but I didn't have the luck to get one).


I also followed the presentation of Rich Niemiec about Tuning Oracle 9i/10g using Statspack! I found it a really good presentation: clear, nice overview, good slides, lots of detail in the hands-outs, digestible information, evolution of B/ESTAT - Statspack - AWR - OEM & ADDM etc.

But I'm more a DBA (or something between a DBA and a DEV, I call myself a DBA4DEV), maybe for some developers it was too complicated, but I find that they should know this too!


The last presentation of today for me was Application Development Tuning Best Practices.
Personally I didn't like this presentation, as I don't believe that you've some "best practices" in app dev tuning which you should follow every time! It depends on what you're doing...
Maybe I'm a scientist... there're some good articles on the site of Tom Kyte about "rules of thumb" etc.

I found it a beautiful day with lots of interesting things to learn!
The pictures of Monday are here.

ODTUG - P2: AM4DP, Reception, (SS+ME+SF)

What I did on Sunday...

Before noon, I did some XML hands-on sessions. Just like the 10g Dev NF session of the day before, it was too basic for me. But it was a fine refresh of the things I already knew.

At noon I tried to watch the Brazil game, but in the US they had some satellite problems, so it was a bit a pain! The burger I eat was way too much! These portions in America are so *big*!!

In the afternoon I saw a really interesting and high-level presentation by Toon Koppelaars. The title says it all "Applied Mathematics for Database Professionals/Practitioners (AM4DP)".
It was a high level session, braked in three parts:

1. The Maths: Mathematical concepts; do you recognize the symbols on the picture?
This was about defining the logic (predicates and proposition, logical connectives, quantification and rewrite rules) and setting the theory (predicative specification, (set) Functions, Powerset and Generalized product)

"Logic is an analytical theory of the art of reasoning whose goal is to systematize and codify principles of valid reasoning whose goal is to systematize and codify principles of valid reasoning. It has emerged from a study of the use of language in argument and persuasion and it is based in the identification and examination of those parts of language which are essential for these purposes." -- Robert Stoll, Set Theory And Logic, Dover Pub., 1963

2. The Application: Apply concepts to the data model (including integrity rules)
Set theory and logic can be used to model databases. Modeling databases = modeling data integrity constraints (attribute values sets, tuple constraints, table constraints, database constraints and transaction constraints)

3. The Real World: implement the data model and guidelines for a strategy
So how did Oracle implement all this? Does this ring a bell: tables, check constraints, primary, unique and foreign keys, ...

I learned that I must think about a lot more than I did before when I'm creating a database model!
Database modeling = constraint modeling: it's all applied logic and theory (non-ambiguous) and constraint implementation!

After the BI summit, where Mark Blog'd about, we had a welcome reception! Although we only got two drink coupons, it was fun ;-) You could easily speak with all the famous "Oracle" people. I really liked the chats with Scott S., Steven F., Mogens N., Roger D. and the Danish and AMIS guys.

In real world we (Scott Spendolini, me, Steven Feuerstein) look better than on the (original) picture ;-) It's my camera that's not doing it's job very well, so I made it b/w.

The pictures of Sunday you find here.

ODTUG - P1: Visiting DC

Today was the first "real" day. With the time difference I had difficulties to sleep, so at 6 a.m. I went for some fitness. I met Paul Dorsey from Dulcian. He was the main speaker at ODTUG today. I was a bit embarrassed I didn't know him right away. He 's all into development and he wrote some books.

This day you could choose between a symposium about web architecture (different talks about soa, etc.) and some hands-on labs.
After having a breakfast I choose to have some hands-on training "Oracle 10g New Development Features". For me it was just a refresh of what I already knew. We saw some new features of SQL, PL/SQL and some other not related stuff.

At the end of the day I saw the guys of AMIS arriving in the hotel. After having a little chat with them I decided to investigate the center of Washington D.C. - some sight seeing if you want -
Here're some pictures of the things I visited.

I didn't include comments on the pictures, if you've some questions on them, just put a comment here... You'll see some pictures of the hotel, conference, my dinner and some remarkable things (for me, being a Belgian).

ODTUG - P0: Flight to Washington

After an eight hour flight we (Borkur, a colleague and friend of me, and I) finally arrived at the Washington D.C. airport. After another two hours security by-pass and looking for our luggage we got a cap to the hotel where ODTUG will start.

The flight 951 (Brussels - Washington DC) with United was fine, although after a few hours it got bored. I just read some books and watched some parts of the movies United was playing. That was something new for me; a chair with a screen in... I could even adapt the volume, channel and what I wanted to see! The food was correct.

It's nice warm in Washington, after a little meal we went for a walk. There were a lot of people walking, some were running... I must admit that Washington D.C. is a living city, just like were I come from (Leuven, although it's not as famous as DC).

Oh yes, there's a 6h time difference in Washington compared to Belgium and Germany (World Cup!). At the moment it's 21h20 in Washington, but it's already late night in Belgium (3h20). That means I'm already awake for some time ;-)

Tomorrow ODTUG starts, I'll try to post some notes on my blog.
Pictures you can find here.