Amazing things happen

In the last days I got shocked a few times... but not in a bad way.

It started a week ago when I saw Susan Boyle chasing her dream of becoming a professional singer. If you didn't see her performance on "Britains Got Talent", you really have to watch it!
She doesn't look like and everybody was laughing when she came on stage, but once she started to sing, the crowed went bananas! It was stunning!


The next I saw was an incredible goal of Christiano Ronaldo in the Champions League game against Porto. If you have ever played football yourself, you know this is an unbelievable shot.


And then yesterday the announcement that Oracle is going to buy Sun.

Oracle is growing at the speed of light. When I thought they would stop buying companies, every other month there is a new announcement. But buying Sun has huge implications as now Oracle can deliver everything; hardware, OS, database and software.
Another interesting note is that MySQL becomes a database from Oracle now. And what about Java; will that be renamed to Oracle Java?
I'm not sure what this will bring for APEX, maybe it can replace all the MySQL/PHP solutions? My guess would be Oracle will offer a migration project for these solutions to the Oracle DB as that will bring more revenue.


Anyway, in times of economic crisis, amazing things are happening!

New Anychart Integration Kit for APEX and website

We're happy to announce that a new version of the Anychart Integration Kit for APEX is available now.
This release works with Anychart 5.1.2 and 5.1.3 and it fixes some issues of previous releases.

As there was a lot of interest in the product, we decided to create a new website which has all information in one place. In the FAQ we explain how things work, there is an installation section and an explanation how to get support and lots more...


At regular times we offer Webinars (online training) about APEX and charts. The next one is already planned for next week! (see the Webinars section on the site)

As with the previous site, a lot of demos are available. The integration kit helps you to make nicer charts. It not only gives your old standard APEX charts a cleaner look and feel, but it also allows you to create other types of charts. A complete list of charts you find on the Anychart website.

Next to the charts we included a section for Maps, Gauges and Gantt charts. These sections we'll update regularly. We plan to offer more webinars about these charts as well as how to create interactive dashboards.

We also created a section to log Bugs and Enhancements for this integration kit. If you go to the Support section you'll see a link at the bottom. It allows you to log your own issue or to have a look at other known issues.

We hope you like this new release and the new site!

Have fun with it!

My participation in ODTUG Kaleidoscope 2009

John Scott, Scott Spendolini, Patrick Wolf and myself prepared a really good APEX agenda for Kaleidoscope 2009. It will be the biggest APEX event so far! If you are quick you can still profit from the early bird registration.

The plan was I would also do a couple of presentations and some Panel discussions, but with pain in the heart I need to announce now I won't be able to join you for ODTUG 2009 in Monterey. I tried to postpone the decision as long as I could but it's not realistic to wait longer...

My wife is giving birth in the beginning of July and the risk to miss that is too high, especially because Belgium is so far away. Next to that it would be too hard for my wife to stay alone with our son.

So I'm a bit sad I'll miss ODTUG this year especially as I love ODTUG and APEX so much! I always like to meet all the people I meet on the internet. But I comfort myself I'll meet some of you at IOUG Collaborate in May or Oracle Open World in October this year... and I'm sure ODTUG next year will work further on the success of this year!

To be honest it was a really hard decision for me, but when I saw the below picture I knew there was only one right decision... I hope you understand.

Interesting sessions @ IOUG Collaborate 09

This year IOUG Collaborate 09 will be held in Orlando, Florida. This conference is one of the three conferences I go to in the States. ODTUG Kaleidoscope is more towards developers, Oracle Open World is more about the latest and greatest of Oracle, where IOUG Collaborate is a bit a mixture of all Oracle technolgies and applications.

There are about 10 APEX Sessions, which allows me to watch some other things as well.
Below you find the sessions I'll probably going to look at. There were some interesting sessions overlapping, which is a pity. There is also Tom Kyte on Sunday, but I'll just have arrived then.

Session Number	Title	Speakers	Track	Category	Presentation Preference	Event Day	Presentation Start Time
Q309	Oracle in the Cloud	Bill Hodak (Oracle)	Database	Virtualization	Quick Tip (30 minutes)	Monday, May 4, 2009	12:00 PM-12:30 PM
106	Running Oracle in the Amazon EC2 Cloud	Tony Jedlinski (Konoso LLC)	Architecture and Infrastructure	Design/Configuration (hardware, storage, network)	Technical Session (1 hour)	Monday, May 4, 2009	01:15 PM-02:15 PM
558	Oracle Application Express 3.2 Forms Conversion	David Peake (Oracle)	Developer	Application Express (i.e. ApEx)	Technical Session (1 hour)	Monday, May 4, 2009	02:30 PM-03:30 PM
516	An Architectural Review of Application Express	Paul Dorsey (Dulcian, Inc.)	Developer		Technical Session (1 hour)	Monday, May 4, 2009	03:45 PM-04:45 PM
520	Managing User Preferences in Application Express	David Scott (Intec Billing)	Developer	Application Express (i.e. ApEx)	Technical Session (1 hour)	Tuesday, May 5, 2009	09:45 AM-10:45 AM
136	Introducing Oracle SQL Developer Data Modeling	Sue Harper (Oracle)	Architecture and Infrastructure	Data Modeling (e.g. Normal Form, Designer, CAD, UML)	Technical Session (1 hour)	Tuesday, May 5, 2009	09:45 AM-09:45 AM
370	Coding Therapy for Software Developers	Steven Feuerstein (Quest Software)	Database	Best Practices	Technical Session (1 hour)	Tuesday, May 5, 2009	11:00 AM-12:00 PM
Q342	A Free Stress Testing Tool From Oracle!	Debra Scarpelli (The Cornflower Group)	Database	Tool Evaluations (Oracle and Third Party)	Quick Tip (30 minutes)	Tuesday, May 5, 2009	12:15 PM-12:45 PM
343	APEX - Ask the Experts Panel	Dimitri Gielis & John Scott (Apex Evangelists)	APEX SIG	APEX SIG	Technical Session (1 hour)	Tuesday, May 5, 2009	01:30 PM-02:30 PM
528	Developing secure mashup's with ApEx.	Marinus Kuivenhoven (Sogeti)Simon Boorsma (Sogeti)	Developer	Application Express (i.e. ApEx)	Technical Session (1 hour)	Tuesday, May 5, 2009	03:15 PM-03:45 PM
531	SQL/XML For Developers	Lewis Cunningham (TUSC)	Developer	Database Programming (e.g. SQL, PL/SQL, SQLPlus)	Technical Session (1 hour)	Tuesday, May 5, 2009	04:30 PM-05:30 PM
534	Oracle11g New Features for Developers	Dan Hotka (www.DanHotka.com, LLC)	Developer	11g Features (for Developer)	Technical Session (1 hour)	Wednesday, May 6, 2009	08:30 AM-09:30 AM
523	(No?) Visible Means of Support(ing Objects?) in ApEx?	David Scott (Intec Billing)	Developer	Application Express (i.e. ApEx)	Technical Session (1 hour)	Wednesday, May 6, 2009	09:45 AM-09:45 AM
539	PL/SQL Collections: Processing Datasets Your Way	Michael Rosenblum (Dulcian, Inc.)	Developer	Database Programming (e.g. SQL, PL/SQL, SQLPlus)	Technical Session (1 hour)	Wednesday, May 6, 2009	11:00 AM-12:00 PM
Q540	Debugging in SQL Developer	Lewis Cunningham (TUSC)	Developer	Database Programming (e.g. SQL, PL/SQL, SQLPlus)	Quick Tip (30 minutes)	Wednesday, May 6, 2009	12:15 PM-12:45 PM
546	Dispelling Myths About Oracle Application Express	John Scott (APEX Evangelists Ltd)	Developer	Application Express (i.e. ApEx)	Technical Session (1 hour)	Wednesday, May 6, 2009	03:15 PM-04:15 PM
545	APEX Interactive Reports: The Good, The Bad and The Ugly	Karen Cannell (Integra Technology Consulting)	Developer	Application Express (i.e. ApEx)	Technical Session (1 hour)	Wednesday, May 6, 2009	01:30 PM-02:30 PM
549	How to Build a multi-tenant SAAS application with Oracle Application Express	Francis Mignault (Insum Solutions)	Developer	Application Express (i.e. ApEx)	Technical Session (1 hour)	Thursday, May 7, 2009	08:30 AM-09:30 AM
552	What happens on an APEX Page?	Dimitri Gielis (Apex Evangelists Ltd)	Developer	Application Express (i.e. ApEx)	Technical Session (1 hour)	Thursday, May 7, 2009	09:45 AM-10:45 AM

On Sunday there is a Welcome Event and IOUG created some tables around certain technologies. I know some people (John Scott, Tony Jedlinski, myself, ...) will be standing at the Oracle Application Express (APEX) table! It's a great time to meet other APEX minded people then and have some drinks and informal talks together...

I look forward to meet you in Florida!

APEX Column in OGh Visie

OGh Visie is a Dutch magazine of the Oracle Benelux User Group. They publish their magazine three times a year and it contains articles about Oracle products... and it's free.

In their last magazine "OGh OBUG Visie 2009 Voorjaar" they asked me to write a column about APEX. I wrote about the use of APEX and what's coming in the future. If you understand Dutch feel free to read the online version.

Roel Hartman also wrote an article about APEX 3.2 in that magazine.

CASE in Interactive Report (APEX)

In APEX 3.1.2 there is a problem with the CASE statement when you use it in the Compute function of an Interactive Report. You might see following error:


The above issue got fixed in APEX 3.2, as you can see here. So if you want that functionality, it's worth upgrading to APEX 3.2. There are more smaller fixes in like these and a number of security enhancements, so I recommend to use APEX 3.2 if you can.

But... when you try this CASE statement (use of smaller than, larger than or BETWEEN) you get an Invalid computation expression message.


Joel Kallman told me this is a bug (Bug 8347332) and it will be fixed in the APEX 3.2.1 patch set. The Apex development team was too restrictive in the operators they allow inside this type of expression.

If I can ask for one more enhancement: let us also be able to use Enters, because if I type some more when clauses it becomes a very long string. It would be nice if I could structure it like in the next screenshot. It would also nice if we could make that Computation field resizeable. As Patrick is now in the team, he already did that in his ApexLib and as JQuery will be in APEX, I hope to see it in 4.0 ;-) Thanks so much!


A workaround at the moment is to include the case statement directly in your SQL statement.
If you can't do that (like our client wanted to specify the above dynamic), you need to build it yourself or search for an alternative function that does work.

Marketing video of Oracle Application Express

Jeff Erickson of Oracle create a "one minute video" to promote APEX 3.2.

I expected to see 1 minute of video, but it was 2 minutes 22 seconds long ;-)

There is not that much technical info in, but if you have only 3 minutes to convince your customer or manager about APEX, you can quickly show that video.

Hopefully he wants to see more, so he makes some time for you to do a real demo. For me that is still the way to convince people about APEX... show it to them!

Worse things happen, but you have options

One day you find yourself in a situation you have to change something in an application and the worst happens... after the change the application doesn't work anymore.

It happened to me... it was a very small APEX application I created for my wife a long time ago. The application allows her to give points on the work of her students. At that time I created a tabular form on top of a view. The underlying tables get updated by an instead of trigger, like I describe here. Of course I forgot about the trigger, so when she asked me to add a field to the view, I did a replace of the view with the new definition.

I guess you know what happened? My wife wasn't able to update the points anymore because with the replace of the view the trigger got deleted. Nothing to worry I thought, I'll use a script to recreate the trigger. If I could find the script now! I created that app very quick and on the side and didn't treat it as a real project, so my source was not in source control.

Then you are happy you are inside the database with APEX as you can use all the features to recover from "disaster" or better human errors. So I thought to use flashback... but how does that work with a view and a trigger linked to that? I then thought I would find my object in the recyclebin of the Oracle database, but nothing there either...

What else can I try... in APEX you have the SQL Workshop and I sometimes use that to do some quick things and I know there is a history in there. The history is really handy in cases like this, but I was unlucky, the code was not there...


Next to try on the list... in SQL Developer there is also a history of the commands you do. I could go back in the SQL history till January, but that was not far enough. I guess there is a preference in SQL Developer to say how much it needs to remember, but I never touched that. Or it must have been with an upgrade of SQL Developer that I lost some history?
Nevertheless I'm so happy you can use F8 or go to View - SQL History and see all your statements.


The only thing left on my list was to restore a backup or a dump. In my case I kindly asked John to get a copy of my scheme like it was the day before.

But then you see the trigger was not there either ;-)

My wife only uses the application a few times a year, so I probably did another change on that view which had caused the trigger to disappear earlier. Finally John found a backup of a few months ago where the trigger still existed, so I could use that. Thanks again my friend!

So lessons learned:
-) Always treat your project as a real project, even if it's very small
-) Save your scripts, if it's not in source control, at least make a backup when you finish development (or even during development)
-) Use the features of the database if things go wrong
-) SQL Developer and APEX have a SQL history, which can save you hours
-) Get a good hosting provider in case all of the above goes wrong. Make sure backups are taken and kept (for a long time) and keep friendly with them
-) and if all that doesn't help, make sure you have a good memory so you can recreate it, because it seems that will be your only option

Free APEX Training

John already blogged about it, but I thought to remind you about it again.

During days of economic crisis people told us their managers are not keen to spend money on trainings, so we are looking for ways to make everybody happy. The person who wants to come, can come and the manager who doesn't want to pay, only pays the absolute minimum.

We have been shuffling with ideas about discounts for 2 or more persons of the same company (we still might do that later) and about some free places for our training.

So the idea we had, was to give a free place on our upcoming APEX Training course to the person who can give us the best reason why they deserve the place.

There are very few rules, only -

1. Your reason must be 50 words or less
2. You must be able to attend the course
3. Our decision is final and will be based purely on the one that makes us laugh the most
4. The winning entry (and any other notable ones) will be displayed on our site/blogs

Email your submissions to training@apex-evangelists.com with a subject line of ‘Free Place Submission’ (or click here to have it auto-filled for you). I don’t mind you also post it as a comment of this entry, but then also send it via mail as that is where we will base the final decision on.

Is APEX still worth looking at?

A while back I got following question:

I am a Oracle Developer and wanted to ask you what is the scope of APEX in the near future. Forms and Reports are still very much alive and APEX jobs are not that much I have seen in the US market. APEX is quite old now (about 3 to 4 years old). What is your view on it?

I would appreciate your input. I have invested huge amount of time in APEX as I was excited as you are with APEX technology and now I feel was it really worth it? Is the future of Forms and Reports -> APEX or is it J2EE. I mean Forms/Reports -> to -> APEX or Forms/Reports -> to -> Jdeveloper (J2EE). I personally like APEX much better.

Apparently still a lot of people are struggling with this question, so I decided to do a post about it, but I'll break down the question in different parts.

Is Oracle Application Express (APEX) old?

It's not "new" anymore, the first public release was in 2004. But is it bad that APEX is getting older? With every new release we got a lot of nice features which made APEX more mature and worth looking at. The Oracle database is very old too, but with every release new features got introduced. The database is also doing a lot of things for you now, which in the past cost you a lot more effort. I see APEX like that, with every new release the development of an application is made easier for you and you get more possibilities to make your application even nicer.

Are there jobs for APEX developers?

I guess we, APEX Evangelists, a company 100% dedicated to APEX, proves you can make a living out of it. Day in day out we work with APEX with many different customers. Development, support, training and consultancy are our main activities. So I can definitely see a job for you in this domain. Sure .NET and Java are asked very much and the APEX market is smaller, but it's growing every day...

What is the future of APEX?

APEX 3.2 got released a couple of weeks ago, which includes a Forms to APEX conversion tool. The next major release of APEX is 4.0 which will include some very nice web 2.0 features. Some of the highlights of that release will be Updateable Interactive Reports (improved tabular forms), Websheets, an APEX listener and Dynamic Actions. A full list can be found in the SOD.

Forms to J2EE or Forms to APEX?

It depends... What is your infrastructure? What knowledge do you have in house? What are your requirements? Why do you want to change?

You have three options, really:

1) Stay with Forms and Reports. You really need to ask yourself why you want to change. Is it because of license costs? Or do you need to web enable and extend your application? Only you know the answer, but going to another technology is not something you do in 1..2..3, so think about it before you start. Both J2EE as APEX provide you with tools to make the migration as painless as possible, but you still need to do some things yourself.

2) Go to J2EE. Already a lot of people went into that direction as Oracle itself is following that strategy for the Applications Suite. I'm not specialized in that area but if you look at the blogs of Grant Ronald or Duncan Mills they have all that information. The ADF development team is doing some really nice work and have some really cool features available.

3) Last but not least you could also chose to convert your Forms to APEX. One of the biggest advantages for me, especially in times of economic crisis, you avoid paying a license for the Oracle Application Server (OAS). APEX doesn't require the full Oracle Application Server, but can run on Apache or directly from the database (later, in APEX 4.0, with the APEX listener it can also run on a java environment like for ex. Tomcat or OC4J). Of course the full Oracle Application Server has some nice features which you won't have, but typically APEX doesn't need the OAS. Next to that most likely you can reuse your existing knowledge...
Especially with APEX 3.2, which includes a Forms to APEX conversion tool, it's worthwhile investigating this option. If you already have a lot of people knowing SQL, PL/SQL and HTML, APEX might be a good fit for you, as these are the main building blocks. But remember this conversions tool is not a silver bullet, you still need to do a lot of work to get your Forms conversion completely finished, so please, see it as a real project and treat it like that.

So to conclude, I'm still happy I chose APEX as my preferred technology. I still don't know that many tools that can create data centric applications at the speed of APEX. More and more people are starting to use it. APEX let you extend your application easily... To make web 2.0 (or 3.0/4.0) applications we intensively use JQuery and other 3rd party components (for ex. Anychart) with APEX too. I really look forward to the APEX 4.0 release as that will already have some of these enhancements out-of-the-box. So we still have things to look forward to and stay passionate about it...

Anychart Integration Kit 5.1.2 for APEX

For the people who didn't see it yet, we put a new download on http://anychart.apex-evangelists.com which let you use the integration kit for Anychart 5.1.2 (and above).

People using Anychart 5 should still use the Anychart 5 integration kit which you find on the same site.

We are currently working on a new site (see image) that shows some of the new features and will also includes the Maps, Gauges and Gantt charts. Something to look forward to!


The integration kit is still free, but includes a Trial version of Anychart. You would need to buy the full version of Anychart to remove the Trial watermark. To make things more clear you can now buy Anychart 5, Anymap and Gantt charts together with the integration kit directly on the site of Anychart.

You can still use the APEX15 promotion code to get a 15% discount on all the products of Anychart which includes the APEX integration kit.

We are happy to help you with any installation issues if you buy Anychart with the APEX integration kit. Next to that we also offer consultancy to help you with creating your charts, dashboards, maps, gauges and gantts or any other question you have about Anychart or APEX.

European APEX Training Days - April

After our highly successful Utrecht and London Oracle APEX Training Days (not to mention our original Brussels Training), Apex Evangelists have just opened registration for our 4th Oracle Application Express 3-Day training course. This time it will be held in the nice Midland Hotel in Manchester, UK, from the 20th-22nd of April.

So, what are these training days? Well, we host a lot of on-site training for clients, however we also hold ‘open training’ days, where anyone can sign up, come along and get training by people who know the product inside-out. We believe that our training provides the highest quality training for superb value for money.

The current agenda (subject to change) covers a variety of topics, but it doesn’t just stop there. We don’t believe in just a 9-5 training schedule and one of our core beliefs with these training events is to provide an open format where you can also raise any other (APEX related!) problems/questions you might have, particularly during some of our ‘out of hours’ relaxed sessions.

If you have been on one of our previous training events then you’ll notice the agenda has changed and even if the topic description might look the same the contents may have been modified, so if you’ve been to a previous event there is still value in attending this one (we’re proud to say that on every course so far we have always had someone who attended a previous event!).

Following the previous training, we expect interest to be high (and places are strictly limited, so please don’t delay to register).

You can find more information on exact location, pricing and signing up at http://www.apex-evangelists.com/training

My schedule and conferences

In the next months there are some nice Oracle and APEX conferences. It looks like APEX is getting more interest every year...

Some people asked when I would be in a particular part of the world, so here is my schedule till July:

- March 11th: APEX presentation and meet-up at Ordina, Utrecht, Netherlands
- April 20th-22th: European APEX Training Days, Manchester, UK
- May 3rd-7th: APEX sessions at IOUG Collaborate 2009, Orlando, Florida
- May 11th-12th: Oracle Education Application Express Advanced, Paris, France
- June 21th-25th: APEX sessions at ODTUG Kaleidoscope 2009, Monterey, CA

I'll blog more about the events in the next weeks.

There are some more trips planned to other parts of the world, but these dates are not fixed yet.

Although it's sometimes hard to be away from family (and for my family it's also not easy), I got a nice surprise from British Airways: I got upgraded to Silver Member, so my flights will be a bit nicer ;-)

Look forward to see you at one of the events.

UKOUG APEX SIG - the day after

On Friday I was in the UK for the first UKOUG APEX SIG. More than 50 people attended (the event was fully booked), more than 20 people were on the waiting list... just to show APEX is getting more and more attention.

Justin Hudd, the organizer of the event, gave an introduction and asked the people in the room about their experience in APEX. As usual we had a very mixed public: people just starting with APEX, people starting to do projects in it and then people with already a couple of years experience. But I was surprised, when the question came who's using APEX in his company (in production), 2/3 of the people raised their hand. That must have been the biggest difference with previous years, where people were looking at it and used it on the side. Now it seems to be used in production very much.

David Peake, product manager of Oracle Application Express, started with the first real presentation. He talked about the "Latest & Greatest from Development" where he gave an update on APEX 3.2 and 4.0. He talked about the APEX Listener, updateable tabular forms etc. (see SOD), but ofcourse the demos where the nicest. He did a migration of Forms to APEX (you can try that on apex.oracle.com too) and showed the new security features in APEX 3.2. For APEX 4.0 he showed Websheets and Dynamic Actions. I was in the back of the room and saw people looking at eachother with a face of "Oh my God" ;-)


In the next presentation of David (he was on all morning) he showed where APEX is used internally at Oracle, and which products Oracle brought out build in APEX. That presentation showed once more that APEX is not there for a short time, but will be a crucial option of the Oracle database.

In the afternoon I talked about Charts in APEX and beyond. The reason I changed the title of my presentation at the last moment was because Anychart brought out version 5.1.2 on the same day. The 5.1.2 release is really, really nice and I wanted to show a part of the new features as well. I'll do another blog post about the new version in the next days. Our APEX-Anychart integration site got already updated, but we're in the progress to extend it with some new examples and to provide you with a new download.


Next we saw a case study "Using Apex to Expose your Business to the Web" by Matt Nolan and Vincent Migue from e-DBA. They showed their own site and a project they did where they used a lot of web 2.0 features (scriptaculus, jquery etc.). You couldn't see the site was build in APEX as it had a complete different look and feel.


The final presentation of the event was by John Scott about "Dispelling Myths about Application Express". If your customers of your company is still not convinced of the power of APEX, you should definitely have a look at John's presentation! Most of the critics on APEX he proofs it's untrue with real numbers.


Before going to the bar we had a Q&A where people could ask anything they liked. We got questions about the integration of Oracle Apps and APEX (white paper to come soon), performance in APEX etc. One of the people in the audience was Jonathan Lewis. I found it very special to talk to an audience when such a respectful and knowledgeable person is in front of you.

I believe it was a very positive first APEX SIG in the UK and I guess something that won't end after this first one.

And finally some pictures from the bar...

test APEX 3.2 for everybody

Today Joel Kallman updated apex.oracle.com to APEX 3.2.0.



This means that after a period where only a few people had access to a beta version, you can test it out yourself!

In December I gave a demo of APEX 3.2 to a customer and they were pretty impressed with the product. It's definitely not a silver bullet, but it can be a good starting point and a great tool to manage your migration from Forms to APEX.

Next to the Forms Migration tool, APEX 3.2 brings some important security updates.

It won't take long before we can actually download the new version of APEX now...

Being in the UK

This morning I took the plane to the UK and instead of flying to Heathrow, I flew to Gatwick.

The flight was pretty good. I was impressed the stewardess new my name! I booked the flight through BA, but the flight was operated by SN Brussels Airlines and it happened that the BA standards correspond to the highest standard of SN. I had seat 1F, so not bad ;-)

Gatwick is a lot bigger than I thought and it's pretty good arranged: no queu to enter the UK, good trains... I was pleasantly surprised.

Tomorrow I'm traveling further to London and on Friday I'll be at the UKOUG APEX SIG.

I asked to change my presentation "What happens on an APEX page" by "Charts in APEX and beyond" as I really believe charts are so cool and Anychart 5.1.2 (due very very soon) even cooler.

Some date related tips to remember

The function INTERVAL DAY TO SECOND already exists from 9i, but I didn't use it that much before.

An Oracle By Example goes into more detail.

In APEX I created a quick example to show you how you can calculate the difference for dates. Behind the Calculate button I call a Process with this logic:

:P28_INTERVAL_DAY_TO_SECOND := CAST ( TO_DATE(:P28_end_date,'DD-MON-YYYY HH24:MI') AS TIMESTAMP WITH TIME ZONE )
- CAST ( TO_DATE(:P28_start_date,'DD-MON-YYYY HH24:MI') AS TIMESTAMP WITH TIME ZONE );

If you are looking for recurrent events (repeating intervals) you can use dbms_scheduler. In the early years of HTMLDB I created an APEX app called Agendimi which was basically an "online Outlook" for teachers. I wish I had the dbms_scheduler package to my disposal at that time!

Here's an example (found here, but adapted for APEX) to get the next 7 days (a plsql region in Apex on the same example page as above:

DECLARE
start_date        TIMESTAMP;
return_date_after TIMESTAMP;
next_run_date     TIMESTAMP;
BEGIN
start_date := CAST ( TO_DATE(:P28_start_date,'DD-MON-YYYY HH24:MI') AS TIMESTAMP WITH TIME ZONE );
htp.p('Next 7 days (only weekdays)');
return_date_after := start_date;
FOR i IN 1..7
LOOP
 dbms_scheduler.evaluate_calendar_string(
'FREQ=DAILY;BYHOUR=9;BYMINUTE=0;BYDAY=MON,TUE,WED,THU,FRI', start_date, return_date_after, next_run_date);

 htp.p(TO_CHAR(next_run_date,'DD-MON-YYYY HH24:MI Day'));
 return_date_after := next_run_date;
END LOOP;
END;

Another nice one FM... I needed a date format like 1.1.2009, so I thought d.m.yyyy, but I couldn't put that into Oracle. Try: select to_char(sysdate,'d.m.yyyy') from dual; You'll get a nice ORA-01821 date format not recognised. So how do you get that format then?

You need to put FM in front of your date format:

select to_char(sysdate,'FMdd.mm.yyyy') from dual;

new ODTUG blog

Mike Riley, President of ODTUG, started a new blog yesterday.

If you want to know more about him, the working behind the scenes of ODTUG or other news about the ODTUG conference, keep an eye on his blog.

I also want to congratulate Mike to become President for 2009. I know him as a very motivated person with a great personality. I'm sure he'll be doing great...

Welcome to cyberspace Mike!

Create some dynamic data

When you are developing an application with a new database design (or an existing database design, but you didn't get any data), it can be handy to quickly create some test data in your tables.

Sure you can create some data manual to test your input forms, but what if you need more data? Or you want to test the performance with a large amounts of records.

Here's a simple select statement that creates you 25.000 random numbers and strings (you can change the number to whatever number you like):

SELECT rownum RNUM
, ABS(MOD(dbms_random.random,100000)) RANDOM_NBR
, dbms_random.string('A', 20) RANDOM_STR
FROM dual
CONNECT BY level <= 25000

You could also create a little procedure that populates your tables with it as you probably have some relationships going on as well (PK-FK). I just needed a select that generates me huge amount of records to test some charts in APEX with.

Update (thanks to Rob - see comments): dbms_random should not be used anymore, see the 10g and 11g documentation. So the select statement from 10g onwards would be:

SELECT rownum RNUM
, trunc(dbms_random.value(1,100000)) RANDOM_NBR
, dbms_random.string('A', 20) RANDOM_STR
FROM dual
CONNECT BY level <= 25000

Anychart 5.1 released

Today Anychart released version 5.1 of their charting product. I really looked forward to this release as it has some really nice features in!

We are currently working hard to get it compatible with the APEX integration kit, so if you're using this together with our kit, you'll need to wait a bit longer before doing the upgrade.

Here are some of my favorite new features:

Scrolling Support

All X / Y Axes based charts (Bar, Line, Area, Candlestick, etc.) can have Axes with scroll bar. You can also control the scroll barts with Javascript.

Heat Map Chart

Heatmap Charts, allows you to give graphical representation of data where the values taken by a variable in a two-dimensional map are represented as colors.

If you hover the legend the right numbers light up.

2D/3D Funnel Charts

Feature rich Funnel Charts both in 2D and 3D, smart labeling, animation, neck control and man more option.

3D Pie Charts and 3D Doughnut Charts

Nice looking, interactive 3D Pie Charts and 3D Doughnut Charts with Animation and all features of regular flat Pie and Doughnut Charts.

There are a lot of other nice features like Multiple X-Axis Support, One or more Interactive Labels or Tooltips, a combination of any chart type in a Dashboard etc. The complete list of changes you find here.

But as a last one... some people told me they would like to have better performance in their charts. Anychart 5.1 will help you with that!

AnyChart 5.1 is based on a new charting engine, which made it possible to improve performance and decrease rendering and update time dramatically. The new engine also allows to used larger data sets without significant time lags, and this applies to all chart types, including AnyMap extension. The below chart says enough...


PS: If you want to buy Anychart 5.1 you can still use the coupon code APEX15 to get a 15% discount!