In memory of Joel Kallman

On May 26th, now a few days ago, the world stood still for a moment for me. When I read that Joel passed away, I didn't know how to deal with it. If it's already hard for me, what about his family and the APEX team... it was a storm in the whole Oracle APEX community, and all of us were shocked and wish his close family and friends the most support.

It just hurts as Joel was such an amazing person, both on a personal level and professionally. I don't know anybody else who's so unselfish, understanding, and approachable as Joel. He was a great person all-around. 

After Carl and Scott, it's the 3rd person who leaves my Oracle APEX family too soon.

Joel was employee number 1 of Mike Hichwa, and they both created and supported APEX from day 1. 

The moment I saw APEX (HTMLDB) it was love at first sight. I became passionate about this great Low Code Development Tool! When I wrote the World Cup Challenge in 2006, to promote what you could do with Oracle APEX, Joel was one of the first to reply to my blog post.

Later on that year I followed his session at Oracle Open World "Building Real-World Solutions with Oracle Application Express" 

That Oracle Open World was legendary, as we held the first-ever Oracle APEX Meetup 

I reread that post, and already back then I wrote: "One thing is sure: Michael Hichwa and Joel Kallman really want to support us!" 

And boy they did... Joel became the face of our community, a true leader.

Many more conferences followed, where APEX presentations were always successful. Kscope became a special place where not only the APEX content was at an exceptional level, it was also the place where many people from the APEX Dev team came together and mingled with the community. Not only was everybody very accessible during the conferences, even during the evening activities and parties we had so much fun, and Joel went always "all-in"! From serious conversations to just laughs and playing poker.

In 2014, after a difficult time for me, I had a really nice chat with Joel. He told me he would pray for me and I will never forget his support.

I appreciate Joel tremendously both on a personal as professional level. He helped so many people, including me. Did you know that Joel, single handedly installed APEX Office Print at Oracle in 2016? He supported us in many ways, I can not thank him enough.

Joel was not only a great coder and manager, but he was also a genius in marketing and community building. In 2015 he launched "LetsWreckThisTogether", together with the community we would make a change in the adoption of Oracle APEX. Joel frequently gave the keynote speech at APEX World. Here Joel went with attendees that won a prize at APEX World on a boat trip.

In 2018 there was Joel's legendary keynote  to "Make Oracle Cool Again"

In 2020, when COVID hit, he sent us an email that the day had come :

We are now in 2021, and we made it... Oracle APEX has never had more attention from inside and outside of Oracle. There have never been more people using Oracle APEX, almost all companies using Oracle are now investing in Oracle APEX and the APEX community has never been so big.

I love Mike's words: "Joel set the tone for how we could all work together. Such a great legacy.  Such a great community.  So international, no BS, just the way things should be.  I think everyone knew that Joel was about community success and he had your back."

Let us continue with our Oracle APEX community and share our knowledge and help others.

Thank you, Joel, you were not only a great community member, but you were also a great friend. 

The link to the official page of Remembering Joel.

Setup the APEX Office Print (AOP) Server with the Oracle Cloud APEX Service

This post is part of the series My spin on the new Oracle APEX Application Development Service.

To print and export data from the APEX Service in the Oracle Cloud, you can use APEX Office Print (AOP).

AOP allows you to generate documents based on templates created in Word, Excel, PowerPoint, HTML, and Text.
For example, people use AOP to create an invoice, send a packaging slip, export an Excel spreadsheet with multiple sheets, or have a monthly PowerPoint presentation with the latest sales numbers.

AOP the go-to print engine for Oracle APEX and the Oracle database and it offers both a cloud service and an on-premises solution. Having your APEX Service talk to the AOP Cloud is straightforward as there's really no installation to do. You can find more info about that in this blog post. But, what if you want your own dedicated AOP server for your APEX Service? Many people actually like to have their own instance so they can print as much as they want, have full control, and maximum speed - as it's closest to your database. In this post, I will show one way to set up your own APEX Office Print (AOP) Server which works with the Oracle APEX Application Development Service.

The special bit with the Oracle APEX Service is that it's a fully managed service, which means the database, ORDS, and APEX are pre-configured, auto-patched, auto-scalable, and optimized. I think it's awesome, but the downside is that you don't have direct access to the machine and the network. 

The installation is a 3 step process:
1. Import the AOP Server image in your own Oracle Cloud
2. Create a Compute instance based on this image
3. Create a Gateway to this instance

The following is a step-by-step guide:

(1) Login into apexofficeprint.com, go to the Downloads section, and click AOP Gateway with Compute 

This will copy the URL of the AOP image, which we will import in your own Oracle Cloud. (FYI we are focussing heavily on the ability to let you run your own AOP instance in the Oracle Cloud, so in the Oracle Cloud section on our website, you will find more ways to run AOP).

Go to your own Oracle Cloud dashboard and click Compute - Custom Images:

Click the Import Image button:

Give it a name and copy the link that is in the clipboard to the Object Storage URL:

Hit the Import Image button:

(2) It might take a few minutes in order for it to create the image, but once it's green, we can Create Instance from this image:

Give the instance a name, select where you want the Compute instance to be, and select an Image and shape:

The selection of the shape really depends on how much you print. I like, for example, the flexible shape

AMD Rome: VM.Standard.E3.Flex (2 OCPU, 20GB Mem) which will cost around $60 a month.

Select the network and assign a public IP address. Note that the public IP is not really necessary, but it just makes the activation of AOP easier as you can connect directly to the Compute instance:

Finally hit the Create button:

Now the Compute Instance will be created:

A few minutes later, the pre-configured AOP instance is up and running. 

Write down the Private IP Address and Click on Subnet:

Next click on the name of the Security Lists:

And Add Ingress Rules:

Add the port AOP is running on. By default, AOP is running on port 8010, but you could change that in the instance if you wanted, and hit Save Changes:

The Compute instance is now fully configured.

(3) The issue with the APEX Service is that it only allows HTTPS calls. Instead of dealing with SSL certificates, we will make use of the Gateways feature in the Oracle Cloud which you find under Developer Services - API Management - Gateways

Create Gateway:

Give it a name and hit Create:

Once the Gateway is created go to the Deployments section:

Create Deployment:

Give it the name AOP and path prefix /aop and hit the Next button

The path can be / and for the URL use the Private URL of the Compute instance.

Make sure to check the "Disable SSL Verification". Our Compute doesn't have SSL, but the Gateway does and the APEX Service will only talk to the Gateway.

In the overview screen hit the Create button

And you will see that AOP is being deployed and becomes Active:

Click the Copy Endpoint in the Deployments section - this is your AOP Server URL!

Those are basically the steps to get your own AOP Server running with the APEX Service.

In fact, it's not only linked to the APEX Service, you can use this technique for any Oracle Cloud service, like Autonomous Database or your database on another Compute instance.

To manage the AOP Server here are some commands you can use when connected to the AOP Server:

start aop : systemctl start aop stop aop : systemctl stop aop status aop : systemctl status aop autostart at boot : systemctl enable aop remove autostart at boot: systemctl disable aop

Happy printing!

Which one to pick: Free APEX Service vs Free Oracle Autonomous DB

I'm a big fan of the Free Oracle Cloud as it allows Oracle APEX, Oracle Database, web developers, or more generally, everybody, to get started doing their thing. If you want to get going, I previously did a series you may want to read called Best and Cheapest Oracle APEX hosting: Free Oracle Cloud.

A few days ago Oracle announced the free offering for the Oracle APEX Service. I previously started on a series on this new APEX service My spin on the new Oracle APEX Application Development Service. I still have to continue that series, but I first thought to write now that it's available for free, about which one to pick.  The Free Oracle Autonomous DB which comes with APEX or the Free APEX Service which comes with the Oracle DB?

All-in-all both services are very similar, but the decision is very easy for me. Ask these two questions to yourself:

Do I want to have SQL*net access (e.g. connect with SQLcl, SQL Developer, or Visual Studio Code)?

If the answer is yes, you need to go with the Oracle Autonomous Database as of the time of writing SQL*net access isn't available for the APEX Service.

Do I want to upgrade my free service to a paid service at some point?

The APEX Service is unbelievable value for money, and 1/3 of the price of the Autonomous Database, so if you ever want to upgrade in one click to a paid version of the APEX Service, you want to start from the free APEX Service, You can't go from the Autonomous DB to the APEX Service, so the one you pick decides where you upgrade to.

Combining both ...

If you don't mind a bit of hassle, you could start with the Always Free Autonomous Database, export the database and APEX apps, and import them into the APEX Service. It will take a bit of effort to do this, but it's definitely a good choice if you don't mind doing that. But from that moment onwards you will work with the APEX Service... or you treat the APEX service as your production environment and your Always Free Oracle Autonomous DB as your development environment.

If you wonder why do you even care about SQL*net access... I work file-based, e.g. all my PL/SQL objects (packages, procedures, ...) are in files in Git and I edit them, I see very nicely what I changed, I can easily commit, etc. I won't mess up other people's code and I can always go back to a previous version. So, I really like to work in Visual Studio Code linked to my Git. Now I could just copy/paste when I'm done editing and compile it in SQL Workshop of SQL Developer Web, but it's one extra step.

Starting with the Always Free APEX Service and upgrading to Paid.

For most smaller projects I will probably educate people to go with the Always Free APEX Service. Most time is spent in APEX anyway and SQL Workshop or SQL Developer Web is good enough for those small projects to maintain the database objects as typically not many people are working on the same package at the same time. So I thought to see how well upgrading from Free to Paid would work... and I must say I was impressed! It took about 15 minutes to do. Here's what I did:

In the Oracle Cloud console, go to the APEX Application Development - APEX Instances and hit the Create APEX Service button:

Follow the wizard to Create the APEX Service; give it a name

Add a password and provide the email addresses of people you want to be notified of maintenance. This notification part is new and really useful!

The Always Free APEX Service is ready and you can play with it. Now, let's hope at some point you are so successful with your APEX app, that you will switch to a Paid instance. Here's what it takes to upgrade.

Click the More Actions : Upgrade Instance to Paid:

Confirm you want to upgrade:

It will take a few minutes to update:

And presto, there it becomes available:

Easy! Now one of the best features of the APEX Service is that it can Auto Scale, which means that on heavy traffic the service can take up to 3 times the OCPU you have. I find that super cool :) You pay for it, but you don't have to do anything, and it's only for the time it needs more resources.

When you upgrade from a free tier, the auto-scaling is not enabled by default. Here's how to enable it: Click More Actions > Scale:

Hit the Auto Scaling checkbox:

This takes a bit of time and for me, it didn't automatically tell me it was done....

... at some point I refreshed the browser and saw it was done:

I like the APEX Service a lot. It's missing a few features before I can move a few customers
e.g. the ability to have custom domain names to name one. 

But since January 13th I'm actually using the new APEX Service and hosting a public website on it.
It's a fun app to predict the curve of the COVID-19 cases in Belgium. There's a static page in front of it, so the custom domain name toogviroloog.be is there, but once you click on Predict (Voorspel zelf), you will see the APEX app hosted on the APEX Service.

Hope this post helps to pick the Free Oracle Cloud service you need.

The Best Rich Text / HTML Editor for Oracle APEX

One of the first bigger public applications I built in Oracle APEX was the website and backend for a flight school (in 2006). It was a little Content Management System (CMS), so the secretary of the flight school could update the website and the trainers could create their online course material and exams straight from an administration page. I used a Rich Text (HTML) Editor, so they could make some text bold, include pictures, add some color and add tables to the text.

In many other applications, I started to use the Rich Text Editor so people could write their own emails and send them straight from their APEX apps. 

In the last 5 years, I didn't only come across the use of a Rich Text Editor in our own applications, but we saw that many people use it when they use APEX Office Print (AOP) to generate documents. AOP has the unique feature that it understands HTML and converts this to native Word/PDF styling. For example, the bold tag in HTML or the use of a span with a certain style is translated as real bold and, for example, that color in the generated document. People love it as they can make very dynamic documents.

Although we and many others are using the Rich Text Editor in our Oracle APEX apps, there were two things that were hard to do (read not native and you have to write extra code):

• dealing with over 32K of data
• upload, manipulate, and include images in the text 

As part of our Plug-ins Pro offering, we wanted to create the best Rich Text Editor (RTE) possible for Oracle APEX. So, a year ago, Bartosz and I did some research on what would be the best way to address this. We thought about enhancing the current RTE of APEX, but while doing the research we found the component was quite old (based on CKEditor 4 in APEX 20.1 and before). So we looked at many different RTEs, and ended up with our top 3:

• TinyMCE: an open-source editor, with which Bartosz had done a lot of work
• CKEditor: this is what is included in Oracle APEX. Before APEX 20.2 it was CKEditor 4, from 20.2 onwards the default one is CKEditor 5. The new editor is also open-source, looks nice but was still undergoing a lot of changes and enhancements, and wasn't backward compatible.
• Froala: used a lot by AOP customers, I have always been impressed by their offering, but it's paid.

They are all good, and although we needed to pay to use this editor in an APEX Plug-in and have the rights to distribute it without people needing to have their own license, we went with the Froala WYSIWYG Editor. 

And, I couldn't be happier with what Bartosz came up with and how easy it is now to use the RTE Editor.

Here's an animated gif to give you an idea of how it looks:

To implement a plug-in in your own app, you can follow this step-by-step guide, which will cover how to download the Oracle APEX plug-ins from the Plug-ins Pro website and import and register the plug-in.

In short, the steps to use the Rich Text Editor Pro plug-in in your own app are:

1. Login, download, and unzip the Rich Text Editor Pro plug-in from plug-ins-pro.com
2. Upload and run from SQL Workshop > SQL Scripts > ddl_unitedcodes_rich_text_editor_pro.sql and  ddl_unitedcodes_rich_text_editor_pro_sample_rest.sql
3. Import the Plug-ins in your app (the RTE Editor exists out of 3 plug-ins): Shared Components > Plug-ins > Import: dynamic_action_plugin_unitedcodes_froala_rte_da_conf.sql and item_type_plugin_unitedcodes_froala_rte.sql and process_type_plugin_unitedcodes_froala_rte_process.sql
   
   
   
   
4. Register the plug-in by going to SQL Workshop > SQL Commands and copy from the README.md file the script and enter your API key which you find in the Plug-ins Pro Portal
   
   
   

Now we are ready to use it in our application. I will use the Sample Database Application that comes with Oracle APEX, and change the Product description item on Page 6, which is a Textarea, to be the new Rich Text Editor Pro:

Edit page 6, click the P6_PRODUCT_DESCRIPTION item and:

- change the item type to be the United Codes Rich Text Editor Pro [Plug-in]

- give it a height of 300px

- change the Appearance - Template: Optional - Above

- change the Source - Form Region: - Select - 

The reason we unselect the Form Region and the item becomes Null is because Oracle APEX doesn't support more than 32K in an item. So we have to fill the item in another way. This is why the Rich Text Editor Pro comes with its own process which supports CLOBs and data over 32K.

We will add a Process by going to Pre-Rendering - After Header - Process - Right Click and Create Process. Call the process Fetch RTE and as Type select United Codes Rich Text Editor Pro (Process) [Plug-in]. The process supports three different ways of loading the CLOB value into the item: SQL Query, Function Returning CLOB, and Table. The most declarative one is the Table, so we will go with that. Select the item and fill in the columns:

In order to save the value back to the database, we also need a custom process, because of the same reason we had to fetch the value, to circumvent the 32K limit.

So, go to Processing - Processes - Right Click and Create Process which will add a new Process.

Move it after the Process Row process. Call the new process Process RTE and select as Type United Codes Rich Text Editor Pro (Process) [Plug-in]. The process supports two different ways of saving the item value into the CLOB column in the table: PL/SQL Code and Table. The most declarative one is the Table, so we will go with that. Select the item and fill in the columns:

That's it! 

Finally, I changed the height of the Modal to be 750px and changed the Labels of the other items to use the Floating template. When you open a product now, the result looks like this:

Now you can make the text bold, upload, drag-drop and manipulate pictures, add videos to the product description, etc. A plethora of options are now available through this new Rich Text Editor!

So our Rich Text Editor Pro exists out of 3 plug-ins: an item type plug-in, a process plug-in which we saw both being used above. But this plug-in also comes with a dynamic action plug-in. The dynamic action plug-in allows you to further customize the Rich Text Editor. Here are a couple of things you can do with the DA plug-in:

• ability to change the toolbar: add and remove buttons
• change settings: allow spell checker, copy/paste images, image resizing, configure the sticky toolbar
• enable/disable image as base64
• upload CLOB

You can customize the RTE editor also via JavaScript, but having this extra DA plug-in makes the life of a low-code developer easier 😀

To see the full power of this amazing plug-in, I strongly recommend installing the sample application that comes with it. You also find the sample application on the Plug-ins Pro website.