OraNA :: APEX

More Changes to flex_ws_api

Jason Straub — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 16:10:05 -0600

I added three new functions to the flex_ws_api. The most significant is the new make_request function which is just like the procedure with the same name but returns an XML type instead of storing the results in a collection. It became apparent to me that you may want to make a request without storing the results in a collection. In my particular case, I was working on a sample application for BiPublisher.

BiPublisher has a service called the PublicReportService. Tyler Muth has blogged about using the scheduleReport operation to schedule a report to be run and delivered vi email or ftp from an Application Express interface. But what if you want the report right now and allow for downloading it directly from that application? There is a runReport operation of the service to allow just that. It returns the report base64 encoded, and you just have to write a process to convert that to a BLOB and download it. No problem!

I set out to build a sample application that would do just that. I noticed that there was an operation called validateLogin so I thought maybe I could create a custom authentication scheme using flex_ws_api to validate the user by making a call to the PublicReportService. That is when I realized that storing the result in a collection won't do any good if the user does not have a valid session yet. So there was a need for a function to return the results as an XMLType. I also added two functions to parse out the results of the XMLType, parse_xml and parse_xml_clob.

I was successful in building the custom authentication scheme after I added these functions. I was also successful in building the rest of the application. You login using the validateLogin operation, view and traverse folders from the BiPublisher repository using the getFolderContents operation, and click on links to download the report using the runReport operation, all in an Application Express application. I plan to make the sample application available on OTN along with a white paper on how it was built. Stay tuned.

On the Road ... Again

noreply@blogger.com (David Peake) — Sun, 30 Nov 2008 05:48:00 -0600

I recently had the pleasure of spending a few days in Quebec City giving a keynote and conducting a Migration workshop. Very beautiful part of the world, but unfortunately it was all work and no play.

I have just landed in Birmingham for the UKOUG. {To prevent jetlag I am currently sitting in the hotel lobby doing email, blogs, OTN updates, etc ... and you thought international travel was so glamorous}

It's Sunday morning I got very little sleep on the plane, they don't have a room available until this afternoon, and the weather is overcast. However, I am excited to be over here in Blighty for my inaugural UKOUG.

Our development team is very geographical dispersed.
One of our newer team members, though not new to Oracle or APEX, Anthony Rayner is based here in the UK. This week will provide a good opportunity for us to spend some quality face-to-face time and go out on some customer visits.

While here I have a few presentations:

Monday 1:10 - 2:10 (Hall 9) Oracle Application Express Now and in the Future
Tuesday 1:15 - 2:00 (Foyer 1, Level 5) Tools: APEX, JDEV, Forms, SQL DEV - the choice is yours hosted by Grant Ronald with Duncan Mills, Sue Harper and myself.

Roel Hartman and Dimitri Gielis have already posted a list of other APEX sessions.

There is an unofficial APEX Meetup Monday night straight after the UKOUG event. I am looking forward to catching up with many from the APEX community. There are sure to be several familiar faces, but I hope to also meet many others from our growing community who I haven't had the pleasure of meeting yet especially as I haven't been over to Europe much.

Next weekend is sure to be a real treat as I am off to see the final round of the World Rally Championship in Wales with my Uncle. I even brought an Aussie flag as there is a young up-and-coming Australian superstar called Chris Atkinson who drives for Subaru and is currently sitting in equal 4th in the championship. Had to bring lots of cold weather gear as it is almost gauranteed to be wet and very very cold standing in the middle of a forest waiting for cars to flashing past - I can't wait :)

The following week I am off to Beijing for "Oracle Develop - The premier development event", which is always fun as I get to spend time with some of my fellow PMs in foreign lands.

You will be pleased to know that we are happy with the progress being made with APEX 3.2 and have been getting some very valuable feedback from the limited early adopters.

Cheers,
David

APEX Meetup @ UKOUG on Monday

Dimitri Gielis — Sat, 29 Nov 2008 06:12:09 -0600

Next week the UKOUG conference is going on. I'm flying to Birmingham on Monday and will stay till Thursday. I believe UKOUG is one of the biggest Oracle conferences in Europe. It's a pity it's the same time as DOAG, but that is mostly towards the German speaking people.

There are also some APEX presentations at UKOUG:

What’s Hot and What’s Not – an Overview of Oracle Development Tools	Mr Sten Vesterli	01/12/2008 11:00 - 12:00 Track Track 5
Oracle Application Express Now and in the Future	Mr David Peake	01/12/2008 13:10 - 14:10 Track Track 6
Application Express Best Practices	Mr John Scott	02/12/2008 11:05 - 11:50 Track Track 4
"Tools: APEX, JDEV, Forms, SQL DEV - the choice is yours"	Mr Grant Ronald	02/12/2008 13:15 - 14:00 Track Roundtables
A Delicious Blend of BI Publisher and Application Express Bursting with Flavour!	Mr Nathan Morgan	03/12/2008 11:45 - 12:30 Track Track 8
Mastering charts in Oracle Application Express (APEX)	Mr Dimitri Gielis	04/12/2008 09:25 - 10:10 Track Track 5
(Re)Developing a logistic application in APEX in the real world	Mr Roel Hartman	04/12/2008 15:05 - 15:50 Track Track 5
Securing an APEX application on a Microsoft platform	Mr Andy Ogg	04/12/2008 16:25 - 17:10 Track Track 5

As you can see I'll talk about charts in Oracle Application Express on Thursday. I'll start to explain how you can create charts in APEX and make them prettier and what is happening under the hood. I'll discuss there are different versions of charts in APEX (based on Anychart 3.3 and 4.1) and at the end I'll also try to quickly show the apex migration kit to Anychart 5.

In the APEX Forum we also talked about having an APEX Meetup on Monday after the opening party (20.30h). We'll probably meet at the entrance of the opening party or you can follow David Peake, John Scott, Anthony Rayner, myself or some others to the "APEX heaven".

See you in a few days!

Oracle APEX Training: Knowhow aus der Praxis

patrick.wolf@gmx.at (Patrick Wolf) — Sat, 29 Nov 2008 09:11:52 -0600

The following posting is in German, since it is targeted towards the German speaking community in Europe.

Auf der Suche nach einem wirklich guten Oracle Application Express (APEX) Training? Welches auch nicht von einem Trainer gehalten wird welcher nur das Skript kennt und von Oracle APEX eigentlich nicht viel Ahnung hat?

Dann müssen Sie nicht mehr weitersuchen! Den gemeinsam mit Dietmar Aust und Denes Kubicek (auch bekannt für seine tolle und umfangreiche Oracle APEX Beispielapplikation) veranstalten wir das APEX Training

Oracle APEX: Knowhow aus der Praxis

Profitieren Sie von unserem jahrelangen und praxiserprobtem Oracle APEX Knowhow! Die Agenda und weitere Details findet Ihr auf der Web-Site wo Ihr Euch auch anmelden könnt.

Noch ein kleines Highlight des Trainings

Wir machen auch wieder unsere Abendlichen Q & A Sessions, welche auch bei den bisherigen Trainings schon super angekommen sind. Den wo gibt es den sonst schon die Gelegenheit seine konkreten Projektfragen/-Probleme gleich von drei Oracle APEX Experten beantworten zu lassen?

Also nicht lange zögern sondern jetzt Anmelden!

Würde mich freuen Euch dort zu sehen.

UKOUG 2008 Conference

Paulo Vale — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 05:15:04 -0600

This year I'll attend to the UKOUG 2008 Conference in Birmingham from 1st to 5th December. The conference agenda looks interesting, although not having so many APEX related sessions. It seems that there are some nice bars in Birmingham :) and Dimitri is planning an informal APEX Meetup on Monday after the Opening Party. It's a good opportunity to meet people from the APEX community. You can

UKOUG is right around the corner!

roelhartman@hotmail.com (Roel) — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 09:13:00 -0600

In a few days I will pack my bags and head off to Birmingham for the 2008 version of the UKOUG. I am looking forward in meeting old friends and making new ones. And of course - attend some of the most interesting sessions available in Europe!
While I was setting up my agenda for the week I noticed that on every day the first session starts at 9:25. That makes it a lot easier to network at night...
My agenda contains a mix of Fusion, DBA, Development sessions and of course APEX (all though there is not that many APEX sessions). It is gonna be a busy week!

Monday	Advanced SQL for PL/SQL Programmers
	Oracle Application Express Now and in the Future
	Oracle Forms: Features and Future
	Building Your Business Services in Oracle ADF: A Case Study of Redeveloping an Oracle Forms Application
	UKOUG 2008 Opening Party

Tuesday	Follow up session to 'Oracle Exadata - Extreme Performance'
	Beginners' Guide to Trouble-shooting
	Extreme Reusability - New Features in Oracle ADF 11g (FTMS)
	Designing and Building Security at the Data Layer
	Community Focus Pubs

Wednesday	Changing to the World with Oracle Web Services and the Service Oriented Architecture (FTGTS)
	The Fusion Development Platform (FTMS)
	Migrating Oracle Forms to SOA and J2EE (Oracle ADF)
	Advanced Oracle Application Express Tips and Techniques
	Performance Tuning Basics
	Visual Data Modeling with Oracle SQL Developer
	25th Year Celebration Party

Thursday	Materialized Views Administration and Internals
	Being Steven Feuerstein (IMHO wins the Best-Title-Award)
	Designing PL/SQL applications
	(Re)Developing a logistic application in APEX in the real world (that's mine)
	Securing an APEX application on a Microsoft platform

Friday	Oracle Beehive - The only complete and open platform for integrated, secure collaboration
	Advanced SQL Features

OAS, APEX and the favicon

Tobias Arnhold — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 12:35:23 -0600

If you want to use a favicon in your APEX/OAS environment you need to copy the file to the following place:

%ORACLE_HOME%\Apache\Apache\htdocs

Example:
It needs to be a icon called favicon.ico with the size of 16x16 pixels.

Solution for APEX import error ORA-20001, ORA-02047 (3)

Tobias Arnhold — Fri, 28 Nov 2008 07:54:35 -0600

Just for the people who are curios about the APEX import error ORA-02047 I had the last couple of weeks.

On the next workday I followed the hint from Dietmar and changed the settings in my dads.conf:


<Location /pls/xe>
PlsqlNLSLanguage GERMAN_GERMANY.AL32UTF8
</Location>

After that the error did not occur again.
In this time I did around 20 to 40 import and exports without any problems. I would say: That's it!

You always have to use AL32UTF8 in your PlsqlNLSLanguage variable.

Update:
28.11.2008 - Error occurred again... For now I just restarted the OAS service and the import worked as well as before.

Change is Coming....

Joel R. Kallman — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 08:46:45 -0600

Change is coming...and no, I'm not referring to the forthcoming change in Washington. I'm referring to Oracle Application Express.

Since the first supported release of Application Express (Oracle HTML DB 1.5), Application Express has been delivered as a supported feature of the Oracle Database, supporting database releases 9.2.0.3 and higher. So even though Oracle HTML DB 1.5 was delivered as a feature of the Oracle Database Release 10gR1, a customer could actually download it from the Oracle Technology Network, install it in their Oracle Database 9iR2 9.2.0.3, and be in a supported configuration.

For the forthcoming release of Oracle Application Express 3.2, which introduces Oracle Forms Conversion, the minimum database version will continue to be 9.2.0.3. But for Oracle Application Express 4.0, the minimum database version will be Oracle Database 10gR2 10.2.0.x - possibly even 10.2.0.4.

Group Headings in an Interactive Report (APEX)

Dimitri Gielis — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 02:41:58 -0600

Did you ever wanted a group heading above your column headings in an Interactive Report in APEX? I wondered why that wasn't already included in APEX, as all components are there to get it to work. Let's create a little example to show what I mean.

Create an Interactive Report on the emp table (for ex. select * from emp).

In your Interactive Report details there's a section Column Groups where you can define groups.
But it also says: "Column Groups are used to group columns together on the single row view."
In my example I created two groups.

Next we need to edit the group to say which columns belong to which group.
In my example I specified that the columns Empno and Ename belong to Group 1. I specified some other columns for my Group 2.

If you run the page you'll see this IR (without group headings)

But when you select the single row view (the Edit icon in front of the row) you'll see this:

So you can see the groups nicely in the single row view but it's not there in the normal report...

So I thought, as APEX is completely dictionary driven, we should be able to find all the pieces and with some javascript we should be able to change the DOM element to include the group headings in the normal report too. The result:

You can see this example live here, the source code is also there, so you can see how I did things.

On the page I open the "Select Columns" automatically, so you can see the available columns and the groups in () and you can dynamically play with showing and hiding columns.

In short the way it works:
1) Query the APEX dictionary to see which columns and groups there are defined and return a string that can be parsed into a json object.
2) Create a javascript function to add the group headings above the column headers. I put some notes in the javascript and added a lot of console.log's. If you remove the // you'll see in Firebug a full trace what is happening.
3) To attach it to the Interactive Report and call it from your page you need to do some more. At OOW I had a chat with Carl about it, at the moment you can't call your own function at the end when the interactive report is called (but he was going to change that in future releases). Carl told me I was forced to put a little timeout there to make sure the Interactive Report was drawn before my javascript ran.

Feel free to try it in your own environment and give some feedback. The code is generic so you should be able to plug it into your environment without that much effort. I didn't use jquery as I wanted a generic solution for a "normal" APEX environment. Another thing I didn't do is looking if you defined a link (edit icon) before the row or not. So these might be enhancements for the next release...

Flashback table data prevented by a constraint

Dimitri Gielis — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 12:48:11 -0600

When I was reorganizing some tables I deleted some data which at the end I wanted to reuse.
I was pretty confident that with the flashback technology in the Oracle database I could get my data again. So I was surprised when I got the message "ORA-01466: unable to read data - table definition has changed".

I thought I had done something wrong so I build a small test case to see what was happening.


-- Create table with one record
create table t (b varchar2(100));
insert into t values ('hello world - works');
commit;
-- Look at the data
select * from t;
-- What timestamp did I still see my data -19-NOV-08 02.09.23.478019000 PM +00:00
SELECT SYSTIMESTAMP FROM dual;
-- Create an index
create index t_idx on t (b);
-- Delete all the data from my table and commit
delete from t;
commit;
-- There's no data anymore, nice
select * from t;
-- And with the flashback technology I see my data
select * from t as of timestamp to_timestamp('19-NOV-08 02.09.23.478 PM');
-- Insert another record
insert into t values ('hello world - no go');
commit;
-- Do some DDL on the table now, add a constraint
alter table t add constraint t_pk primary key (b)
select * from t;
-- I still see my data at this stage, but now we drop the constraint and delete the records
alter table t drop constraint t_pk;
delete from t;
commit;
-- Use flashback again
select * from t as of timestamp to_timestamp('19-NOV-08 02.09.23.478 PM');
-- I can't get to my data anymore

When reading through the documentation this made it clear: "Oracle Database cannot restore a table to an earlier state across any DDL operations that change the structure of the table".

Oracle does have limits ;-) and time for me to read through the documentation again...

Integrate Oracle Forms with APEX

roelhartman@hotmail.com (Roel) — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 07:14:00 -0600

APEX 3.2 will contain functionality to migrate Oracle Forms to APEX. I am one of the (about) 10 lucky people that take part in testing the Limited Early Adopter release, so I know what it can and cannot do (I will blog about that later).
In 2007 Wilfred van der Deijl did a presentation at ODTUG about the integration of Oracle Forms with JSF, JSP and ADF Faces. This eventually resulted in a product OraFormsFaces. The technique he used is elaboratly described in this Step-by-step guide.
So I thought: Why not try to copy this technique and do this also in APEX?

So first I created a simple form showing Orders (all is based on the HR scheme). The second step is to incorporate this Form in an APEX region. So I created a page and within that page a PL/SQL region. The region source is a call to a database procedure APEX$CALL_FORM. This procedure has a couple of arguments, like formname, username and password. This procedure simply uses htp.p to put out the same tags that are used to show a form the regular way (I used Firebug to grab that code) and uses the parameters to replace the formname etc.

The results is:

This is showing a Form within an APEX region. The form is embedded in two DIV's: An 'innerdiv' and an 'outerdiv'.
Next was to apply some style attributes to the div's and the applet itself to keep the menu, buttons and scrollbar out of sight. I used the width and height settings to eliminate the scrollbars and negative margin settings to clip all unwanted content.

The result of that excercise look like this:
You can hardly tell that this is an Oracle Form (especially because I used similar visual attributes as the APEX theme).

The next step was to use this form as a master for a (detail) APEX region: Order Items. Just above the Order Items region I created a dummy region that contains the Order Id for which the Order Items should appear in the report. In the HTML Form Elements Attributes of the Order Id I entered a piece of javascript (onchange="javascript:refresh_region(this);") that would refresh the Order Item region on a change of the Order Id (therefore the function refresh_region does a call to html_PPR_Report_Page).

So far so good. When navigating through the form the Order Id should be updated (and automagically the Order Items get updated as well). So I added a WHEN-NEW-RECORD-INSTANCE to the Order Block in the form with just one simple call: web.show_document('javascript:$s("P1_ORDER_ID",'||:DEMO_ORDERS.ORDER_ID ||')', '_self');
This sets the (APEX) P1_ORDER_ID to the current Order Id in the form. And this works magnificent!
The final step is to use the Oracle Form as a detail to an APEX region as well (so a master-detail-detail page). Therefore I copied the 'CommunicatorBean' java code from Wilfred's guide and deployed that on my Forms Server (it took somewhat longer than just these two lines, but I won't go in to that ;-) ). I also added a CommunicatorBean-item to my form and added the following code in the WHEN-CUSTOM-ITEM-EVENT triger on that item.

declare
BeanEventDetails ParamList;
ParamType number := text_parameter;
Event varchar2(1000);
Payload varchar2(1000);
begin
BeanEventDetails := get_parameter_list(:system.custom_item_event_parameters

);
get_parameter_attr(BeanEventDetails, 'Event', ParamType, Event);
get_parameter_attr(BeanEventDetails, 'Payload', ParamTyp

e, Payload);
if event='do_key'
then
message('About to '||payload);
do_key(payload);
end if;
if event='execute_query'
then

    set_block_property('DEMO_ORDERS', DEFAULT_WHERE, 'WHERE CUSTOMER_ID = '||payload );
execute_query;
end if;
end;

Then I created a master region (Interactive Report on Customers) and on the column Customer ID a link: javascript:setFormItem(#CUSTOMER_ID#); and this function does nothing more than : document.formsapplet.raiseEvent('execute_query', pCustId );.
And now, when I click on a Customer Id, the Form immediately shows the Orders for that customer and the Order Items are synchronized with the Order in the Form.
So it is possible to integrate your existing Forms with an APEX application, making a smooth transition possible.
I have submitted an abstract for ODTUG on this subject, so if it is selected I can show you this (and more!) live...
Last but certainly not least, many thanks to Wilfred for sharing his knowledge on the web!

Anychart 5 integration kit for APEX

Dimitri Gielis — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 09:07:54 -0600

A few days ago we released our Anychart 5 integration kit for Oracle Application Express (APEX).

Background

APEX has the ability to create (flash) charts. They are based on an older version of Anychart, version 3.3. Although these charts are already nice, there are some problems with it. You can't do everything you want with it, you can't print for ex, in short they look fine but not great.
Anychart released a while ago Anychart 5 which not only looks a lot nicer, but it resolved the problems and it has a lot more possibilities and features! Below, on the left, a chart created in APEX by using one of the predefined examples and on the right, the chart in Anychart 5 format.

I hope the charts speak for themselves ;-)

Installation

You can install this integration kit in a couple of different ways. If you prefer to keep the original APEX installation intact, you can do that and copy the integration kit in another folder. That means you can use the Anychart 3.3 and Anychart 5 charts together (like on the site of us).
You can also overwrite the files that came with APEX (take a backup first!) and that should change all your charts (also existing ones) in Anychart 5 format.

In both cases you can still use the wizards in APEX to create the charts, but if you decided to not overwrite the files, you need to make a small change in the chart region to point to the right path where you installed your files. The integration kit was tested on APEX 3.x (0, 1) and database 10g, 11g and XE with both the http server and the Embedded PLSQL Gateway. However if you do find a problem, please let us now or write a mail to apex@anychart.com.

Under the hood

So what's happening? The Anychart 5 file format is in a very different format, so what we did is creating a translation file which converts the Anychart 3 xml into Anychart 5 xml. You'll see the 2DColumn.swf of the integration chart are really small, that's because only the translation is done there and then sent to the anychart.swf file in the format it recognizes.

Using the integration kit

You can keep using the wizards in APEX to create your chart. This integration kit is meant as a first step towards the full kit we are working on. All the current types of charts in APEX are already supported by this kit and more, like for ex the combined charts - like on the screenshot above-, but Anychart 5 can do a lot more. For the Dashboards and Gauges for ex, which are currently not yet a type in APEX, you would need to write some more code yourself.
The followup kit will also provide you with the possibility to create these types of charts (Dashboards, Gauges, Maps, Gantts) through a wizard or at least with writing as less code as possible. In the meanwhile we (Apex Evangelists) can provide you with consulting to create other types of charts.

Examples

A full set of examples can be found on this site. All types of charts are shown in the standard APEX format (without changing or making it nicer), in the middle (if you enable the checkbox) you'll find the exact same chart but using the integration kit (so no changes made there) and on the right you find the same chart but with a few changes that shows the potential of Anychart 5.
You can also view the source of the region, the chart and the series that are used.

Purchase

The integration kit comes with a trial version of the Anychart 5 .swf file. You can see it by the watermark. If you buy the full version from the Anychart website and replace the anychart.swf file that comes with the integration kit, the watermark will disappear.
The integration kit itself doesn't cost you any money, you only need to pay for the Anychart license. APEX users get a 15% discount by using the code: APEX15

Final thoughts

This integration kit came together by the partnership of Apex Evangelists and Anychart. I would like to thank the people at Anychart for their help in working on this.

Timepicker and APEX

Paulo Vale — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 09:04:04 -0600

ClockPick is a jQuery time picker plugin. As I showed in previous posts, it's fairly easy to integrate third party javascript components with APEX. A demo of ClockPick working with APEX can be found here. How to do it? 1- Upload files to your APEX server. You can upload them directly to the server filesystem or use static files in Shared Components; jquery.clockpick.1.2.4.js clockpick

In loving memory of our son, father, brother, fiancé and

Carl Backstrom — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 22:37:12 -0600

In loving memory of our son, father, brother, fiancé and friend
Carl Backstrom
October 19, 1973 – October 26, 2008

Thank you, thank you , thank you to everyone. For all the memories shared, donations and words of comfort, please know each is truly appreciated by Carl's family. It means so much to us to know how many people loved and respected Carl. Many of you expressed such beautiful memories and words of comfort that we truly understand why Carl enjoyed his work so much. On behalf of Carl's daughter, Destany, and our family we would like to thank you for the generous donation made. Please know that the funds are set aside to send Destany to college to ensure she has the future Carl dreamed for her.

Carl truly enjoyed his work and interacting with so many people. He loved problem solving and figuring out new and interesting solutions. Many a time he would share with us what he was working on, especially when he helped someone with their application or was able to change code from 8 lines to 3. Most of the time we would smile and nod even if we didn't have a clue to what he was talking about. We knew his job wasn't work to him but a chance to help people and solve a problem. It is wonderful to hear from his Internet family since we saw the hours he put in (even if we were encouraging him to get off the computer to come play). We saw how hard he worked and how much of himself he put into everything he did.

“And in the end, it's not the years in your life that count. It's the life in your years.” - Abraham Lincoln

Donations to Carl's Memorial Fund can be made several ways:
Domestic wire transfers
Account Number 152460903
Citibank ABA Number 322271724
International wire transfers SWIFT Code: CITI US 33
Checks
Make payable to Susan Bailey (Carl's Mother)
Address: 3395 S. Jones Blvd #403
Las Vegas, NV 89146

My first live hockey game

Dimitri Gielis — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 17:55:28 -0600

On Tuesday I went to my first ever live hockey game. I didn't know what to expect when James said me he had tickets for the hockey game, but he told me hockey is pretty big in Canada.

I saw the game Calgary Flames against Toronto Maple Leafs, which Calgary won 4-3. They played for a full house, so the atmosphere was very nice. The Flames first got a goal against, but it didn't take long before they scored some nice goals and took the lead. During the game you get sometimes time-out for commercials, that was new for me (well all of this was new for me).

I must say I liked it very much! Hockey is such a fast game and there's always a certain tension in the air. Like for ex the last minute when it was 4-3 the Leafs played without goalie!

Seeing hockey live is so much more fun than watching it on tv.

Players on the field, big screen tv's to watch the replays, real flames when goals were scored... everything for a fantastic evening.

What's up, DOAG?

Joel R. Kallman — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 21:18:14 -0600

It's pronounced "what's up, dog?"...or if you're a Cleveland Browns fan like I am, it's pronounced "what's up, Dawg?" (my thanks to Sergio for this play on words).

The conference of the German Oracle User's Groups, Deutsche Oracle-Anwendergruppe 2008 Konferenz + Ausstellung (DOAG), is happening Monday 01-DEC-2008 through Wednesday 03-DEC-2008 in Nürnberg, Germany. Here is the conference program in German and English. There are a fair number of presentations about Oracle Application Express, including mine about what's coming new in Oracle Application Express in 2009.

I'm looking forward to the entire conference. Maybe some of the local attendees can take us on a walking tour of the Nürnberger Christkindlesmarkt.

Caution with new "Runtime Where Clause" in Oracle APEX 3.1

patrick.wolf@gmx.at (Patrick Wolf) — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 10:39:14 -0600

I am officially an APEX Pro now....

roelhartman@hotmail.com (Roel) — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 09:12:00 -0600

Today I received the silver medal on the OTN APEX Forum!

500 more to become an Expert...

Or should I go for an Ace of Spades....

Damn, APEX Page deleted! What now?

Dimitri Gielis — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 19:03:54 -0600

You know that feeling when you're working hard on a system, did a lot of changes, finally get the required result and start clean up old code?

I was in that stage... but then it went wrong: I deleted the wrong components and even some pages...

So what do you do then? What would you do in a not-APEX development environment? Getting an old file back, but what if you changed multiple files? Go back into source control and get the latest release? But are you using source control?

I was lucky as in APEX I could just Export my application as a few minutes ago. The below screen shows this feature to you.

Your database needs to have Flashback enabled for this, but who's database is not running in archivelog mode and has the flash recovery area enabled?

Maybe some of you didn't know about this possibility, it's definitely a nice one.