OOW - APEX panel - schedule APEX meetup

OOW APEX panel

Well, the really first APEX SIG meeting has taken place this morning! And I was in it ;-)
The room was full of enthusiastic people firing questions. The time went so fast that not all questions could be raised! BUT not to worry, we'll have some other sessions like these in the near future! I would like to thank all people who attended! I really enjoyed to listen to your questions... I hope you enjoyed it too.
You find some pictures of the meeting below. The questions and answers will be posted on the IOUG website by Steve Howard. As soon as it's available I'll put the link in the comments of this post.

Picture of the other side (the crowd - 7 minutes before we started, so not all people are included).


Picture of the APEX panel (from left to right: Steve Howard, Tony Jedlinski, Dimitri Gielis, Doug Gault, John Scott)


OOW APEX meetup

The registration is still open, even when you don't register, you're free to come.
The meetup will be on Wednesday 7pm in the bar across the Moscone Center "Fourth Street Bar & Deli". I didn't book a table, so we'll see how it goes. It's the bar where John and I had our 2nd drink, we already "APEX'ed" them ;-) so it should go smoothly!
We've all some great idea's about APEX, so lets discuss this with some beers (and food?) and even more important ENJOY!

OOW - Saturday - Registration

My first night in SF was short... Although I was exhausted from the flight, I couldn't sleep.

During the night I read some blogs and surfed the internet. When the sun rose I took my shower and went downstairs for breakfast. The breakfast was ok, but when I compare it to my honeymoon in Mauritius, this meant nothing.

I took the first Oracle shuttle to Moscone Center, where John and I would meet. In the bus I met some other Oracle enthusiast and we directly started to talk. The atmosphere is great in SF, we're all "Oracle" connected, maybe this is also called "FUSION"? ;-)
I can also understand Laurant Schneider, as he describes on his blog, I had almost similar feeling about the traffic in SF, although we didn't have an accident (but it was close to that).
On the way to Moscone Center you get literally Oracle brainwashed (although for me this isn't possible anymore, as I'm already 100% Oracle minded). The OOW logo is everywhere, busses are "Oracle" painted, buildings have the Oracle logo on it... it's pretty impressive!

We were lucky... We could register directly, no queue! This will be different on Monday!
The organization is amazing! The smallest detail is handled. I got a complete guide of OOW, some Oracle gadgets and magazines, a ticket to the Elton John concert on Wednesday, lunch vouchers and ... a 30Gb iPod! It was good ;-) I'm also part of "Club Oracle Gold" as I was one of the first 500 people registered for "Information Overload". This means some extra advantages as for ex. having a special area to have a drink.

John and I did a tour through the Moscone Center. It's nice to know somebody you like in the big city... we spent the whole day together. We had some nice chats and of course our second beer ;-)
It's amazing how "the same" John and I turned to be. For ex. we bought the same iPaq, the same Wireless Router and we're thinking about a lot of things the same way. We both are APEX promoters, so we also had chats about that and what we could do for the community... We've some plans... ;-)

In the evening we came together with the APEX panel (Steve Howard, Doug Gault, John Scott, Dimitri Gielis, Tony Jedlinski) of tomorrow, except for Tony Jedlinski, who couldn't make it.
We went to a nice and famous restaurant "Tadich Grill", Steve was knowing. The food was excellent. I can't remember the name of the plate I ordered, but it was a soup of seafood with garlic bread. I'll update this blog entry with the name afterwards.
We discussed about the APEX SIG and how we would do the APEX panel of tomorrow. They're all amazing people... I had a great time! Thanks guys!

OOW - Friday - My flight to SF

Today was “travel day”. I don't know how Tom Kyte handles it, but passing all these security checks, just to go to the USA, is a real “pain in the ass”.

I left home (Leuven, Belgium) around 8 o'clock Belgium time. Arrived in Brussels at 8h50.
After waiting for about 15 minutes I arrived at the 1st security check: the “Security Officer”.
It seems that my electronic flight ticket and passport where fine. Ok, “please go to the second line”.
After 40 minutes I get to the lady who does the 2nd security check and hands over my boarding pass.
The 3rd security check: Duane – Passport control of Police – cleared - after waiting another 10 minutes.
I arrived in the airport shopping center... I thought, no time to lose now, I go directly to my gate, so I can start my blog entry about explaining the expanding thumbnail in DG Tournament.
The 4th security check: “screening”. You need to put all your metal, laptop and other belongings in a plastic bag which will be x-rayed. Your body needs to go through the metal detector. Did I say this line was also big? Another 20 minutes. If you think that was it, you were wrong...
For the States there's another security check!
Just before my gate, the 5th security check was a fact! This row of people waiting to get screened was even longer as all the rest... Again my belongings were x-rayed and my boarding pass and passport were investigated (twice).
Of course the next step is to go into the plain, and then the 6th security check is done! Boarding pass and passport. It took me more then 2 hours to get from the terminal into the plain!
The plain left at 11h10 a bit later as foreseen. I arrived in Chicago at 20h (Belgium time, this is 2 pm Chicago time). My connecting flight to San Francisco left two hours later... but the two hours were needed to pass all the security checks again.
Arriving in the States, means waiting a long time to pass the duane. They take your fingerprints and picture, of course you need to smile, but it's difficult when you had to wait for 35 minutes to get there. Next thing was searching my bag and checking it in again. Then take a train to Terminal 3, as this is the terminal were my next American Airlines flight waited for me. Of course I had to pass three other security checks before getting on my final flight to SF.
I arrived in San Francisco at 2 o'clock (night) Belgium time, that's 5 pm SF time.
My Friday, that was about it... a one day travel or not?

I checked in in the "Best Western Grosvenor" hotel SFO. At first sight the hotel looks nice (although my wireless connection is untrustable in the first hours I've been here!).

After unpacking my luggage I went to John Scott, who's staying in the Hintol Hotel in SF city.
We had a beer and had some typical American food ;-) At the end it was a lovely evening...

After 26h of "no-sleep", I'm heading to my bed.

DG Tournament Explained (1) - Thumbnail Expander

This is a first draft, as some people asked me to publish it as quick as possible. If you see it's not working or I forgot some steps, put a comment. I'll update it when time allows, as I'm at OOW and don't have that much time.

While I'm blogging about the integration of the "Vevstein Thumbnail Expander" I see there's a new version available, called Highslide JS.

I initially used version 1.1.2 (free version) in DG Tournament but I recently upgraded to 2.0.4 (in my APEX dev environment - this version is free for non-commercial purposes).

You can implement the thumbnail expander in different ways. Having everything in the database (workspace_images), having it on the /i/ directory, ... I'll show the one I think it's the fastest implementation.

OS-level

1. Download highslide 2.0.4 here.
   
2. Unzip the file
3. Copy the higslide directory to your /i/ or www dir. (for ex. oracle/product/10.2.0/db_2/Apache/Apache/htdocs)

APEX-level

1) in shared components create a stylesheet and put this in:

.highslide {
cursor: url(highslide/graphics/zoomin.cur), pointer;
outline: none;
}
.highslide img {
border: 2px solid gray;
}
.highslide:hover img {
border: 2px solid white;
}
.highslide-image {
cursor: poiner; /* opera */
cursor: url(highslide/graphics/zoomout.cur), pointer;
border: 2px solid white;
}
.highslide-image-blur {
cursor: pointer;
cursor: hand;
}
.highslide-caption {
display: none;
border: 2px solid white;
border-top: none;
font-family: Verdana, Helvetica;
font-size: 10pt;
padding: 5px;
background-color: white;
}
.highslide-display-block {
display: block;
}
.highslide-display-none {
display: none;
}
.highslide-loading {
display: block;
color: white;
font-style: 'MS Sans Serif';
font-size: 9px;
font-weight: bold;
text-transform: uppercase;
text-decoration: none;
padding: 3px;
opacity: 0.60; /* w3c */
filter: alpha(opacity=60); /* ie */
border-top: 1px solid white;
border-bottom: 1px solid white;
background-color: black;
padding-left: 22px;
background-image: url(highslide/graphics/loader.gif);
background-repeat: no-repeat;
background-position: 3px 1px;
}
a.highslide-credits,
a.highslide-credits i {
padding: 2px;
color: silver;
text-decoration: none;
font-size: 10px;
}
a.highslide-credits:hover,
a.highslide-credits:hover i {
color: white;
background-color: gray;
}

2) in your template reference the created stylesheet and the javascripts, for ex. put:
<br /><link rel="stylesheet" href="#WORKSPACE_IMAGES#theme_TDG.css" type="text/css"><br /><script type="text/javascript" src="highslide/highslide.js"></script><br /><script type="text/javascript"> <br /> hs.graphicsDir = 'highslide/graphics/';<br /> hs.outlineType = null;<br /> window.onload = function() {<br /> hs.preloadImages();<br /> }<br /></script><br />

3) create a page and a region report. In the Image_id column add this as HTML Expression:
<br /><div style="text-align:center;"><br /><a href="http://not-a-real-namespace/http://not-a-real-namespace/http://not-a-real-namespace/http://not-a-real-namespace/http://not-a-real-namespace/http://not-a-real-namespace/http://not-a-real-namespace/http://not-a-real-namespace/http://not-a-real-namespace/http://not-a-real-namespace/http://not-a-real-namespace/http://not-a-real-namespace/http://not-a-real-namespace/http://not-a-real-namespace/http://not-a-real-namespace/http://not-a-real-namespace/http://not-a-real-namespace/http://not-a-real-namespace/http://not-a-real-namespace/http://not-a-real-namespace/http://not-a-real-namespace/http://not-a-real-namespace/http://not-a-real-namespace/http://not-a-real-namespace/http://not-a-real-namespace/#OWNER#.TDG_PR_SHOW_IMAGE?p_image_id=#IMAGE_ID#" class="highslide" onclick="return hs.expand(this)"><br /><img id="thumb1" class="vte-auto" src="http://not-a-real-namespace/http://not-a-real-namespace/http://not-a-real-namespace/http://not-a-real-namespace/http://not-a-real-namespace/http://not-a-real-namespace/http://not-a-real-namespace/http://not-a-real-namespace/http://not-a-real-namespace/http://not-a-real-namespace/http://not-a-real-namespace/http://not-a-real-namespace/http://not-a-real-namespace/http://not-a-real-namespace/http://not-a-real-namespace/http://not-a-real-namespace/http://not-a-real-namespace/http://not-a-real-namespace/http://not-a-real-namespace/http://not-a-real-namespace/http://not-a-real-namespace/http://not-a-real-namespace/http://not-a-real-namespace/http://not-a-real-namespace/http://not-a-real-namespace/#OWNER#.TDG_PR_SHOW_THUMBNAIL?p_image_id=#IMAGE_ID#" title="Click to enlarge" /><br /></a><br /></div><br /><!--<div class="'highslide-caption'" id="'caption-for-thumb1'">#USER_NAME#</div>--><br />

4) create an other region with this (necessary for the pop-up):
<br /><div id="highslide-container"></div><br />

5) create the procedures to show the thumbnail and real image:
<br />PROCEDURE "TDG_PR_SHOW_IMAGE" (p_image_id IN NUMBER)<br />AS<br /> l_mime VARCHAR2 (255);<br /> l_length NUMBER;<br /> l_file_name VARCHAR2 (2000);<br /> lob_loc BLOB;<br />BEGIN<br /> SELECT mime_type, image_blob, image_name, DBMS_LOB.getlength (image_blob)<br /> INTO l_mime, lob_loc, l_file_name, l_length<br /> FROM tdg_image<br /> WHERE image_id = p_image_id;<br /><br /> -- Set up HTTP header<br /> -- Use an NVL around the mime type and if it is a null, set it to<br /> -- application/octect - which may launch a download window from windows<br /> OWA_UTIL.mime_header (NVL (l_mime, 'application/octet'), FALSE);<br /> -- Set the size so the browser knows how much to download<br /> HTP.p ('Content-length: ' || l_length);<br /> HTP.p ('Expires: ' || TO_CHAR (SYSDATE + 50, 'Day, DD Month, YYYY HH24:MI:SS'));<br /> -- The filename will be used by the browser if the users does a "Save as"<br /> HTP.p ('Content-Disposition: attachment; filename="' || l_file_name || '"');<br /> -- Close the headers<br /> OWA_UTIL.http_header_close;<br /> -- Download the BLOB<br /> wpg_docload.download_file (lob_loc);<br />END tdg_pr_show_image;<br /><br />PROCEDURE "TDG_PR_SHOW_THUMBNAIL" (p_image_id IN NUMBER)<br />AS<br /> l_mime VARCHAR2 (255);<br /> l_length NUMBER;<br /> l_file_name VARCHAR2 (2000);<br /> lob_loc BLOB;<br />BEGIN<br /> SELECT mime_type, thumbnail_blob, image_name, DBMS_LOB.getlength (thumbnail_blob)<br /> INTO l_mime, lob_loc, l_file_name, l_length<br /> FROM tdg_image<br /> WHERE image_id = p_image_id;<br /><br /> -- Set up HTTP header<br /> -- Use an NVL around the mime type and if it is a null, set it to<br /> -- application/octect - which may launch a download window from windows<br /> OWA_UTIL.mime_header (NVL (l_mime, 'application/octet'), FALSE);<br /> -- Set the size so the browser knows how much to download<br /> HTP.p ('Content-length: ' || l_length);<br /> HTP.p ('Expires: ' || TO_CHAR (SYSDATE + 50, 'Day, DD Month, YYYY HH24:MI:SS'));<br /> -- The filename will be used by the browser if the users does a "Save as"<br /> HTP.p ('Content-Disposition: attachment; filename="' || l_file_name || '"');<br /> -- Close the headers<br /> OWA_UTIL.http_header_close;<br /> -- Download the BLOB<br /> wpg_docload.download_file (lob_loc);<br />END tdg_pr_show_thumbnail;<br />

*) A full explanation copied from one of the examples provided with the zip file.
<br /><!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.1//EN" "xhtml11.dtd"><br /><html><br /><head><br /><title>Highslide JS</title><br /><!-- 1 ) Reference to the file containing the javascript. This file must be located on your server. --><br /><script type="text/javascript" src="highslide/highslide.js"></script><br /><!-- 2) Initialize the hs object and optionally override the settings defined at the top of the highslide.js file. The parameter hs.graphicsDir is important! --><br /><script type="text/javascript"> <br /> hs.graphicsDir = 'highslide/graphics/';<br /> hs.outlineType = null;<br /> window.onload = function() {<br /> hs.preloadImages();<br /> }<br /></script><br /><!-- 3) These CSS-styles are necessary for the script to work. You may also put them in an external CSS-file. See the webpage for documentation. --><br /><style type="text/css"><br />* {<br /> font-family: Verdana, Helvetica;<br /> font-size: 10pt;<br />}<br />.highslide {<br /> cursor: url(highslide/graphics/zoomin.cur), pointer;<br /> outline: none;<br />}<br />.highslide img {<br /> border: 2px solid gray;<br />}<br />.highslide:hover img {<br /> border: 2px solid white;<br />}<br />.highslide-image {<br /> cursor: poiner; /* opera */<br /> cursor: url(highslide/graphics/zoomout.cur), pointer;<br /> border: 2px solid white;<br />}<br />.highslide-image-blur {<br /> cursor: pointer;<br /> cursor: hand;<br />}<br />.highslide-caption {<br /> display: none;<br /> border: 2px solid white;<br /> border-top: none;<br /> font-family: Verdana, Helvetica;<br /> font-size: 10pt;<br /> padding: 5px;<br /> background-color: white;<br />}<br />.highslide-display-block {<br /> display: block;<br />}<br />.highslide-display-none {<br /> display: none;<br />}<br />.highslide-loading {<br /> display: block;<br /> color: white;<br /> font-style: 'MS Sans Serif';<br /> font-size: 9px;<br /> font-weight: bold;<br /> text-transform: uppercase;<br /> text-decoration: none;<br /> padding: 3px;<br /> opacity: 0.60; /* w3c */<br /> filter: alpha(opacity=60); /* ie */<br /> border-top: 1px solid white;<br /> border-bottom: 1px solid white;<br /> background-color: black;<br /> padding-left: 22px;<br /> background-image: url(highslide/graphics/loader.gif);<br /> background-repeat: no-repeat;<br /> background-position: 3px 1px;<br />}<br />a.highslide-credits,<br />a.highslide-credits i {<br /> padding: 2px;<br /> color: silver;<br /> text-decoration: none;<br /> font-size: 10px;<br />}<br />a.highslide-credits:hover,<br />a.highslide-credits:hover i {<br /> color: white;<br /> background-color: gray;<br />}<br /></style><br /></head><br /><body style="background-color: silver"><br /><!-- 4) Create an empty container for the Highslide popups to live in. This container must be defined directly after the body tag. --><br /><div id="highslide-container"></div><br /><!-- 5) This is how you mark up the thumbnail image with an anchor tag around it. The anchor's href attribute defines the URL of the full-size image. --><br /><a href="http://not-a-real-namespace/http://not-a-real-namespace/http://not-a-real-namespace/http://not-a-real-namespace/http://not-a-real-namespace/http://not-a-real-namespace/http://not-a-real-namespace/http://not-a-real-namespace/http://not-a-real-namespace/http://not-a-real-namespace/http://not-a-real-namespace/http://not-a-real-namespace/http://not-a-real-namespace/http://not-a-real-namespace/http://not-a-real-namespace/http://not-a-real-namespace/http://not-a-real-namespace/http://not-a-real-namespace/http://not-a-real-namespace/http://not-a-real-namespace/http://not-a-real-namespace/http://not-a-real-namespace/http://not-a-real-namespace/http://not-a-real-namespace/http://not-a-real-namespace/images/full-image.jpg" class="highslide" onclick="return hs.expand(this)"><br /> <img src="http://not-a-real-namespace/http://not-a-real-namespace/http://not-a-real-namespace/http://not-a-real-namespace/http://not-a-real-namespace/http://not-a-real-namespace/http://not-a-real-namespace/http://not-a-real-namespace/http://not-a-real-namespace/http://not-a-real-namespace/http://not-a-real-namespace/http://not-a-real-namespace/http://not-a-real-namespace/http://not-a-real-namespace/http://not-a-real-namespace/http://not-a-real-namespace/http://not-a-real-namespace/http://not-a-real-namespace/http://not-a-real-namespace/http://not-a-real-namespace/http://not-a-real-namespace/http://not-a-real-namespace/http://not-a-real-namespace/http://not-a-real-namespace/http://not-a-real-namespace/images/thumbnail.jpg" alt="Highslide JS" id="thumb1" title="Click to enlarge" height="120" width="107" /><br /></a><br /><!-- 6 (optional). This is how you mark up the caption. The id contains the words 'caption-for-', then the id of the img tag above. --><br /><div class="'highslide-caption'" id="'caption-for-thumb1'"><br /> This caption can be styled using CSS.<br /></div><br /></body><br /></html><br />

That should do it! (replace the <.br /> by a carriage return, for an odd reason blogger puts this in?)

JES - Apex Developer of the year

For the fifth year the editors of Oracle Magazine present Editors' Choice Awards to extremely accomplished candidates, people that best reflect the highest achievements and vision in their areas of expertise. You find the winners for every domain for the year 2006 here.

The title "Oracle Application Express Developer of the Year" goes to John Scott (also known as JES in the APEX forums). I would like to congratulate John, he's a well deserved winner!

In the beginning I only knew John from the forums, but in May he hosted my World Cup 2006 APEX application and we started to chat. In the meanwhile John also hosts DG Tournament and we'll meet at OOW. I'll be honored to be next to him in the APEX roundtable panel on Sunday.
But even more I look forward to just meet John in real life!

Firefox 2.0 RC3

Firefox 2.0 - also called 'Bon Echo' got a new release candidate.
Downloads can be found here, release notes (not yet updated to rc3) here.

I suppose I don't need to tell you Firefox is the best browser ;-)

On the picture DG Tournament in Firefox 2.0 RC3.

Oracle Tuning

This topic is staying to long in my drafts, so I decide to publish it, as is.

It has nothing to do with my new application "DG Tournament"... the application is "my free-time" ;-) during the day I'm a consultant doing mainly Oracle database things.

Today I had to do some database tuning... There won't be anything new in this thread, but if you don't know it, you can't use it.

You can tune a lot of different things. The most important thing are:
(0. think before, think "how" the application will work, do a proper design, test, test, test, ...) - but in a lot of cases I'm only involved when this is already finished ;-) - actually the smiley should be :-(
1. the Application (logic, how to do things, select statements, programming code, ...)
2. the Application Server
3. the Database
4. the OS and the Hardware (disks, cpu, network)

A lot of people have the reflection to shout add the dba and tell him "the database is working slow". We can discuss about this ;-)

Following I found useful in my tuning (tuning of application and database):
- SQL> set autotrace on
- Oracle Trace Analyzer, as Eddie describes in this great article: "TKPROF on steroids"
- YAPP, as Anjo describes it here, 10 years later
- Upgrading from 8.1.X to 9.X - Potential Query Tuning Related Issues: Metalink Note 258167.1 (yeah, some customers still go from 8 to 9!)
- Oracle Database 10g Migration/Upgrade: Known Issues and Best Practices with Self-Managing Database: Metalink Note 332889.1
- If I develop myself I "instrument" my application code and investigate what would be the best way to do things. Asktom and Q&A from Steven Feuerstein are great sources how you should develop PL/SQL code. This thread for ex. can be useful for developers.

Thanks...

Well, the first release of DG Tournament is online... in the following days I'll blog about the genesis of the application and the APEX features I used. In the meanwhile you can already give it a try. The registration is free.

I've first sent a mail to the people who were registered to the World Cup 2006 application, as they were my motivation to create the next version. I would like to apologize for sending the mail twice to some people.

I also would like to thank John Scott and Kristel Geukens for their help.

Enjoy DG Tournament!

WC2006? - No DG Tournament!

APEX group on OOW connect

I created an APEX group on the Oracle Open World Connect website.

If you go to OOW and are interested to meet some other APEX developers or enthusiasts, sign up! ;-)

There're some other nice groups... you find the ones I subscribed to on the picture.

--
Tomorrow there'll be an other announcement on this blog!!
--

Install SUSE 10 with favorite toys

It was already a long time ago I played with Suse, but last week I finally installed it again...
My goal: have a fast/"last" linux system with my favorite toys: Oracle DB 10.2.0.2, Apache (companion cd), APEX 2.2.1, SQL Developer 1.0.0.15, JDeveloper 10.1.3.1 and Firefox.

I used Open Suse 10 and although this version is not certified to run Oracle 10gR2, it works. Certified versions of linux are the "Enterprise" versions of Suse or Redhat. I didn't use the Enterprise version, as I would like to see the latest "glitter and glamour" ;-)

ATTENTION: if you're installing a production environment with Oracle soft, please use a certified system!!

I'll describe in this post how I installed all of the above as it didn't all work "out-of-the-box".

1. Installation of Open Suse 10 (free version)
First thing to do, download the soft from the Suse FTP Server and write it on DVD.
I decided to put Suse next to my Windows XP (I have only 1 partition on 1 disk). This goes really smooth: you do a checkdisk and defrag of your disk in Windows. Afterwards startup the pc with the Suse DVD and tell the installer to dynamically shrink the Windows partition to the needs of linux. I used the setup of partitions as the installer proposed. After clicking a few time "next" you'll have a dual boot, Windows - Suse Linux. Ah, as desktop environment I used GNOME... Before I often used KDE, but now I thought to try something else, as I found KDE a bit "heavy". I always had the impression that GNOME was a little bit "faster"/"smoother" than KDE, although my experience is maybe a bit out of date.

2. Installation of the Oracle Database 10gR2
There's a nice article on the website of Dizwell Informatics (Howard J. Rogers) which describes this step in great detail (even with video). You find it here.
I followed almost all the steps mentioned in the article, but there were also some additional steps:
- To get Apache working, I needed the file libdb.so.2. Via YAST -the configuration tool of Suse- I installed the Berkeley database soft, found on the Suse DVD, because the necessary libs come with it.
- Next to what Howard says, I also had to add to my /etc/hosts file my machine name after 127.0.0.1 localhost. That solved my problem with my listener and em when I wasn't connected to a network (I use a laptop). (Error: can't find host)
- I didn't install a database together with the Oracle 10gR2 soft. After the "software only" install was completed successfully, I installed the companion cd (Apache) and after that the patch 10.2.0.2 which can be downloaded from Metalink.
- Only after the patch was applied I created a new (custom) database. If you create a template based database (for ex. general or data warehouse) you need to apply the patch to the database, if you do it like I did, it's already done (latest soft used to create the database).
- My dbora file looks a bit different, as I start more than only the database

3. Installation of APEX 2.2.1
Download APEX 2.2.1 from OTN here. The APEX documentation is here.
Follow the installation notes, and verify you put the marvel.conf at the end of httpd.conf. I also needed to comment "PlsqlDocumentPath docs" in the marvel.conf file out.

4. Installation of JDeveloper and SQL Developer
Download SQL Developer from OTN here and JDeveloper here.
Installing these is very simple, just unzip it into your preferred directory. However I needed to install the SUN java package before. You find it here.

Tips:
- As with every other product it's important to read through the documentation... Not a long time ago somebody remembered me again. I thought to know something, but as Tom Kyte says it often: "features change through time", and I would like to add to that: "or you just forget about it".
- Ensure you've at least 10 GB free disk space.
- Run the Oracle Installer as follows (to bypass it's not a certified environment): ./runInstaller -ignoreSysprereqs
- Ensure all processes are running (for ex.: ps -ef); you should see a lot of oracle and Apache processes
- Check log files for problems (HTTP-, alert, opmn, ...)
- Create shortcuts to your favorite applications
- To get my Firefox "java enabled" I had to create a symbolic link to my java directory (cd /usr/lib/firefox/plugins and ln -s /usr/java/jre1.5.0/plugin/i386/ns7/libjavaplugin_oji.so). You can download the java runtime environment here.

My Experience so far:
I really like my Suse system. I've the impression that the Oracle tools run smoother in a linux environment. My system needs some time to start, but when it's there, it works really well.

APEX schedule on OOW

Below you find the schedule of APEX presentations at Oracle Open World (SF).

If you look good, you'll find my name into it too ;-) I really look forward to meet the other persons at the ApEx SIG roundtable panel, and of course YOU with all your interesting and difficult questions!

ID	Session Title	Speakers	Date/Time	Room
S282226	IOUG Oracle Application Express (APEX) Special Interest Group Meeting	Steven L. Howard, John Scott, Tony Jedlinski, Dimitri Gielis, Doug Gault	Sunday Oct-22-06 10:45 AM -12:00 PM	Hilton Hotel Continental Parlor 3 Hilton
S283062	Build a Dynamic Menu Framework with Oracle Application Express	Tony Jedlinski, Roman Inc.	Sunday Oct-22-06 2:00 PM -3:15 PM	Hilton Hotel Continental Parlor 3 Hilton
S281141	Oracle Application Express, Now and in the Future	Marc Sewtz, Michael Hichwa, Marco Adelfio (Oracle)	Monday Oct-23-06 10:45 AM -11:45 AM	Hilton Hotel Continental Ballroom 6 Hilton
S281144	Oracle Migration Workbench: Taking Database Migration to the Next Level	Donal Daly, Oracle	Monday Oct-23-06 10:45 AM -11:45 AM	Hilton Hotel Franciscan Room C Hilton
S281162	Building Media-Rich Business Applications Using Oracle interMedia and Oracle Application Express	Robert Abbott, Oracle	Monday Oct-23-06 12:45 PM -1:45 PM	Hilton Hotel Continental Parlor 3 Hilton
S281146	Hands-on Lab: Oracle Application Express--Building a Functional Application	Sue Harper, Joel Kallman, Marc Sewtz, Marco Adelfio, Oracle	Monday Oct-23-06 3:00 PM -5:00 PM	Hilton Hotel Imperial Ballroom B Hilton
S281922	User-Managed Metadata: Oracle Application Express Meets Oracle Warehouse Builder 10g Release 2	Jim Raper, City of Charlotte; Doris Phillips, City of Charlotte	Monday Oct-23-06 3:15 PM -4:15 PM	Moscone West 3007 West
S281178	Location-Enabling Database Applications with Oracle Application Server MapViewer and Oracle Application Express	Siva Ravada, Oracle	Monday Oct-23-06 4:15 PM -5:15 PM	Hilton Hotel Franciscan Room C Hilton
S281160	Hands-on Lab: Developing Google-Style Maps for Your Oracle Database	L J Qian, Oracle	Tuesday Oct-24-06 10:00 AM -12:00 PM	Hilton Hotel Imperial Ballroom A Hilton
S281145	CERN: Building Real-World Solutions with Oracle Application Express	Joel Kallman, Oracle; Giovanni Chierico, CERN	Tuesday Oct-24-06 3:45 PM -4:45 PM	Hilton Hotel Continental Ballroom 6 Hilton
S281946	Putting the Express Back into Oracle Application Express with Ajax	Steve Karam, Burleson Oracle Consulting and Training	Thursday Oct-26-06 8:00 AM -9:00 AM	Moscone West 3004 West
S283155	How IntelliReal Is Using Service-Oriented Architecture to Seamlessly Integrate Companies	Bradley Brown, TUSC	Thursday Oct-26-06 8:00 AM -9:00 AM	Moscone West 2001 West

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.