Oracle APEX 3.0.1 is out!

Maybe you have already heard the rumors that Oracle is releasing a patch release for APEX 3.0.

It's finally out, you can download Oracle APEX 3.0.1 from OTN, or just the patchset for a 3.0 to 3.0.1 upgrade from Metalink. The patch number on Metalink is 6113844.

See the release notes for a list of fixes. BTW, Oracle APEX 3.0.1 is also "supported" to be installed on Oracle XE.

Have fun!

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Some interesting postings

In the past few weeks there have been a few interesting APEX related postings I want to share with you.

• Anthony Rayner started his own APEX blog and did an interesting posting about AJAX retrieval using Javascript Object Notation (JSON). Something I also want to integrate into one of the next versions of my ApexLib Framework.
• Carl Backstom blogged about how to integrate an Accordion widget into APEX (Part 1) / Part 2 and
• another posting done by Carl was about using JSLint to verify your JavaScript code.
• Andy Tulley blogged about Using Scrollbars in a Region.
• The last link which I want to share is about Different ways of counting clicks in Apex by Flavio Casetta!

Have fun reading them!

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Ever heard of RSS?

I'm sure you have already heard about RSS. But are you actually using it?

I have talked to different people who are regularly reading blogs, but which are not using a RSS reader like Google Reader, the built-in readers of Firefox and Internet Explorer or some other web-based or stand alone readers.

Such a reader can make your life so much easier, because instead of regularly visiting all the blogs manually (and most blogs don't have any new postings anyway) - so you are pulling the information - RSS will pushes new articles to your RSS reader. You don't miss any new article and get instantly informed if there is something new.

That's a real time safer!

Recently I came across a nice video explaining what's behind RSS and a RSS reader. The video is available in English and German.

So don't waste time anymore and sign up for a free RSS reader, for example Google Reader and subscribe to my blog! :-)

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Oracle Database Plugin for Eclipse

Looks like Oracle is contributing more and more for the Eclipse environment.

A few weeks ago they joined the Eclipse Foundation and today I read on Donal Daly's blog that Oracle has released a beta version of the Oracle Database Plugin for Eclipse Data Tools Platform. For more details see the posting on Donal's blog.

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Back in Town

I'm back home and finally found the time to do a short "Hallo" posting.

After a week without a computer, ok Dimitri shared his sometimes so that I could have a quick look at my e-mails, I must say I didn't miss it to much. Looks like that I'm not that much addicted from my computer as some thought ;-)

I even was not sure if I ever come back to Vienna, because my flight from Daytona Beach to Atlanta was really overbooked (about 5 seats) and until the last minute it was not clear if there are enough volunteers who trade there seat. But finally I got one. The flight back from Atlanta to Vienna was unspectacular and after about 9:20 hours with a little bit sleep I was back in town!

But no rest for me, because I was picked up by some friends of my hometown Grünau im Almtal, who come to Vienna to go to the Donauinselfest, one of the biggest festivals in Europe with about 2,6 million people in 3 days! So I just had a quick shower and I was on the track again. :-) That was probably not to bad, because that way I was active all the time and didn't think about the Jet-Lag. So we partied until 2 am, until they got tired :-)

ODTUG was really nice and interesting. Beside APEX I attended some presentations for SOA/BPEL, Oracle ADF and PL/SQL (Unit Testing). But meeting a lot of people you just know from the forum or via e-mail was really nice. Putting some faces to some names, like Dimitri, Joel, Mike, David, Scott, Raj, Flavio, Wilfred, Karen, ...

David Peake, me, Joel Kallman (BTW, David. Didn't notice that you are that tall!)
I spent most of the time with Dimitri, it was the first time that we personally met, so we hung out at the beach the hole Sunday.

Dimitri

I really enjoyed the stay in Daytona Beach. The only drawback was that I didn't had the opportunity to do a presentation there. For example the "The Power of the Oracle APEX Repository". But I'm sure, next year I will not miss the deadline.

On Dimitri's and Wilfred's blog you will find a more detailed summary of the ODTUG conference, also with some more pictures.

Hope to see you guys there next year too!

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Heading to ODTUG

It's now also time to leave and go to the airport. My plain is leaving around 12:00. Fortunately I don't have to wait that long in Atlanta for my connection flight as Dimitri had to do. "Just" 3 1/2 hours...

I will probably not blog that much, because I don't have a notebook with me. Unless Dimitri shares his with me :-) But I'm sure on his blog you will find some impressions of the ODTUG conference.

See you there!

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Are you going to ODTUG Kaleidoscope?

Then you should meet with some other Oracle APEX enthusiasts at the APEX meetup.

Dimitri has set up a small APEX application to do the planning of the event, check it out and register yourself!

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Oracle SQL Developer 1.2 released

Maybe you have already read somewhere else that Oracle SQL Developer 1.2 has been released. Maybe you have also read in one of my previous postings that PL/SQL Developer is my favorite development IDE.

But why could SQL Developer still be interesting if you are an Oracle APEX developer and are using another IDE?

Because the new release 1.2 has some interesting features, especially for Oracle APEX developers.

• Direct Export/Import of an Oracle APEX application has been integrated into the new release. It also offers several reports to browse the Oracle APEX Dictionary views. See Kris Rice blog postings New Patch with APEX features and More APEX/SQL Developer for more details.
• The Oracle Migration Workbench has been integrated into SQL Developer. You can read more about it at Donal Daly's blog in his Oracle Database Migration has reached the next level posting.

Give it a try and check it out.

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Passed the 100.000 page view boundary

Just noticed that according to StatCounter I passed the 100.000 page view boundary today. On Google Analytics it looks like that I have passed it already several days ago, because there it shows more than 115.000 page views.

Want to have some statistics?

• On 22nd Nov 2006 I started my blog with the Generic Solution for cascading select lists/LOVs,
• since than I have written 137 postings.
• Between 350 and 500 unique visitors get astray to my blog each day.
  
• The generate between 600 and 1000 page views during there visit.
• According to Feedburner, my blog feed has 273 subscribers.
• The best day so far was on May 15th, with 606 visitors and 1,508 page views.
• The weekends are lousy, only during the week I have the above statistics.
• Google is the only search engine which brings in a lot of visitors.
• A reason for that could be that I'm listed on the first page if you search for Oracle APEX.
• Most visitors are using Firefox on Windows,
• have a screen resolution of 1280x1024 or above and are
  
• coming from the United States.
  

But compared to some other Oracle related blogs, I have a small blog. But hey, I need some room for grow :-)

Some screen captures with the statistics

The rest are from Google Analytics, because it has much nicer graphics than StatCounter...














Let's see how long it takes to pass the next 100.000 page views...

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Highlight current Tree Node

During the DOAG SIG workshop I was asked how to create a treeview in Oracle APEX where the current selected tree node is highlighted.

After a quick thought about the problem, it turned out that there is a quite simple solution for it if you combine the treeview query with some HTML code.

1. Create a regular tree region
2. Create a form region which gets synchronized with your tree
3. Change the tree query to contain the following CASE statement

   SELECT EMPLOYEE_ID AS ID
        , MANAGER_ID  AS PID
        , CASE
            WHEN EMPLOYEE_ID = :P4_EMPLOYEE_ID THEN
                '<span style="color:white;background-color:blue;">'||
                LAST_NAME||
                '</span>'
            ELSE
                LAST_NAME
          END AS NAME
        , 'f?p=&APP_ID.:4:'||:SESSION||'::NO::P4_EMPLOYEE_ID:'||EMPLOYEE_ID AS LINK
        , NULL        AS A1
        , NULL        AS A2
     FROM #OWNER#.EMPLOYEES

What does it do?

When the tree is rendered the CASE compares the currently processed node (EMPLOYEE_ID) with the current active record (P4_EMPLOYEE_ID) which is displayed in the form.
If the IDs match, it wraps the LAST_NAME column with a SPAN which contains some styling information.

Quite simple, isn't it? :-)

View a working demo of the example.

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Oracle Database 11g will be launched on July 11

Just read on Edie Awad's blog, that the Oracle Database 11g is going to be launched on July 11 with an event in New York City.

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SQL Workshop - Commands: Keyboard Shortcut

Did you know that you can use the keyboard shortcut Ctrl+Return in the SQL Commands textarea of the Oracle APEX SQL Workshop application to execute the current SQL statement?

That's really nice, especially if you are used to it from PL/SQL Developer/TOAD.

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The Power of the Oracle APEX Repository

I have finally translated the presentation I have done at the DOAG SIG APEX workshop into English.

Just read a blog posting by Jan from iAdvice, who had the same idea about using the dictionary views for QA checks as I also describe it in my presentation. But there are also a lot of other examples for which you can use them.

Download the presentation from Sourceforge in the Misc / Presentation section.

Hope you like it!

PS: If you have other good examples for the usage of the views, let me know.

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New MS Access to Oracle APEX migration tutorial

Just read on Donal Daly's blog that the Oracle Migration Workbench team has released a step by step migration tutorial about "How to migrate MS Access to Oracle APEX".

They migrated the MS Access Northwind Traders example application and published it as a running example on apex.oracle.com. The new name of the APEX application is now Southwind Wholesalers.

Check out Donal Daly's posting for more information.

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My first public Oracle APEX presentation

Today I had my first public presentation about an Oracle APEX topic. I was doing a presentation about "The Power of the Oracle APEX Repository" at the SIG (Special Interest Group) workshop of DOAG in Kassel, Germany.

The motto of the workshop was "Oracle APEX for Advanced" and because of the overwhelming interest by presenters and participants, DOAG organized a XXL workshop with 8 presentations! So it was a full day packed with lot of interesting stuff.

And it looks like that people are really interested in some more advanced Oracle APEX topics, because 95 people attended the very well organized meeting!

For example I liked that after each presentation there was at least a 10-20 min break, to have a chat and to share some tips and tricks.

Ok, how was my presentation?

I had the "pleasure" to have mine after the lunch break and I know from my own experience that this time is sometimes a fight against tiredness. But I think I did my best to keep them awake! Just a few fall asleep :-)

Beside of the meeting I had the opportunity to meet the first time personally with Dietmar, Denes and Carsten. Really nice guys!

Ok, it's now 23:55 and I just arrived back in Vienna. I first thought that I will miss my flight back, because the train I took from Kassel to Frankfurt was 30 min late. But everything worked out fine.

That's all for now. I have to go to bed now, because I'm really really tired :-)

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