Integrate Speech Recognition into Oracle APEX

Tyler Muth has posted a really cool example on how to integrate Oracle APEX with another service.

Jott is a speech recognition service and allows to integrate third party applications into there service. Tyler used this mechanism to write the output text of the speech recognition into the table of an Oracle APEX application. Read all the details on his Speech to text to Oracle APEX posting.

Great work Tyler!

Too bad that the service is not available in Europe :-(

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Remote debugging of an Oracle APEX application

If you ever wanted to remote debug the PL/SQL code which is called during execution of an Oracle APEX application, then have a look at the May/June issue of the Oracle Magazine. David Peake wrote an article titled The Power of Two on how to use SQL Developer to do that. On the German Oracle APEX Community Web-Site you will find a similar how-to in German.

Update: In Oracle APEX 3.1.1 there will be a new debug mode called REMOTE to enable remove debugging in Oracle APEX without having to modify the application. See the related posting on the OTN Forum.

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Should you consider Apache 2.0 for an Oracle APEX installation?

Just read a very interesting posting by Joel Kallman, titled Oracle HTTP Server, Apache 2.0 and connection pooling. Before Oracle 11g, mod_plsql was just available for Apache 1.3 which had one big drawback on Unix systems. Apache 1.3 just supports a process model which prevents that mod_plsql can really take use of a database connection pool, because each process has his own "dedicated" database session which can't be shared across process bounders.

That's different to Apache on Windows which uses a thread model and allows to share the database connections between the threads. Apache 2.0 has been enhanced to support a thread model on Unix too. Check out Joel's posting for further details. In my opinion that are good news for Oracle APEX running on a Unix based Apache, because that should normally decrease the number of database sessions in your database.

BTW, I like to welcome Joel in the Oracle APEX blogging community!

He told me during OOW that he had started a blog some time ago, but actually nobody knows about it (also not his team) and I had to be quit until someone discovers him. Or at least that's what I remember from a long evening in the pubs... :-)

But today he had his public "outing" by being added to OraNA, so it's my time to introduce his blog to the Oracle APEX community. If you don't know Joel, he is the Software Development Manager for Oracle APEX. Give him a warm welcome!

BTW, Joel you had a quite good start this year, much better than last year. :-) Keep up posting!

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More Oracle APEX blogs

I don't know how this blogs could hide for such a long time from my Oracle Application Express (APEX) radar, but there are two new Oracle APEX blogs out there.

Paulo Vale has started his Oracle Apex Notebook blog back in September and Jason his APEXWONDER blog in October. So check them out and give them a warm welcome! Bloggers like comments in there blog! :-)

Paul and Jason, welcome to the Oracle APEX blogger community and keep blogging!

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Survey: XML in the database

Note: The following article is in German, because the referenced blog is written in German.

Der Carsten Czarski, auch bekannt für seine tolle Arbeit auf den Seiten der deutschen Oracle APEX Community, macht gerade auf seinem Blog SQL und PL/SQL in Oracle eine Umfrage zum Thema "XML in der Datenbank". Vielleicht schaut Ihr ja schnell mal vorbei und macht mit!

Übrigens, sein Blog enthält immer wieder tolle Postings. Sehr lesenswert!

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Another blogger from the Oracle APEX team!

I want to welcome David Peake, the product manager for Oracle Application Express (APEX) in the Oracle APEX blogging community. A quote from David

My intention is to use this Blog to inform people on new things happening within APEX. One of my other reasons for starting the blog is because there are times when I need to get things from the Community as well.

And he immediately started to request things from the community :-). He wants to build a new section on the OTN Oracle APEX Page with a showcase of Internet applications built using APEX.

Check out his blog and give him a nice welcome!

David, looking forward to see you at OOW in SF!

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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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Oracle APEX blog community is growing

The Oracle APEX blog community is growing and growing. In the last few weeks 7 new APEX related blogs have been started.

Check out the blogs of

• Andy Tulley
• Denes Kubicek
• Dirk I. McComsey
• Duncan Mein
• Kristian Jones
• Peter Manchev
• Timoshinin Evgeny (in Russia)

Welcome on board!

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Oracle APEX related articles you should read

Lately a few Oracle APEX related articles have been published which you should read.

• John Scott posted a whitepaper about "APEX - Delivering Pages in 3 Seconds or Less" which he held on Colab 07 in Las Vegas.
• Dimitri Gielis also posted the whitepaper of his presentation about "APEX by Example: Shared Components".
• The security section of the unOfficial APEX Wiki has been updated with a lot of additional information.

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New APEX blog from one of the Oracle developers

Marc Sewtz, one of the developers of Oracle APEX has started his own blog. Check it out at http://marcsewtz.blogspot.com/!

Marc, a warm welcome in the APEX blogging community and I wish you enough time to write some interesting postings!

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Three new interesting postings

If you haven't subscribed to all Oracle APEX blogs which are out there, I want to bring your attention to the following three postings which I think are of general interest.

• Oracle APEX 3.0 + Cocoon = PDF (and more) by Carl Backstrom
• Installing Oracle APEX 3.0 on Oracle XE by Jornica
• Creating a Nested Report by Dietmar Aust
  

Just to keep you updated :-)

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Sergio's blog and some old postings

On weekend I was reading some of the old postings (years 2004, 2005, 2006) of Sergio's blog. I think there are lot useful tips and tricks you can get from this "old" postings, because they are still valid in Oracle APEX 2.2. So browse through his blog archive!

Just a few postings which I have bookmarked

• Controlling Runaway Text Fields
• Trick: Friendly Date Format For Reports
• Right Align Numbers in Tabular Form
• HTML SELECT Width Revisited

But there are a lot of others. There are also some old screenshots, it's really funny to see the old look and feel of APEX... :-)

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Oracle 11g PL/SQL enhancements

Just read an interesting posting on Igor's Oracle Lab about the planned PL/SQL enhancements in Oracle 11g. I really like some of the planned features. Want to get the full story? Check out the presentation done by Tom Kyte.

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iAdvise - another APEX blog

I want to welcome the iAdvise blog in the APEX blog community!

A recent posting was for example, how to "Deploy Your Multilingual application in a production environment".

Welcome and keep up posting!

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Integrating the HTML editor FCKEditor and adding fuzzy logic search

The German APEX community website has just released a new edition of there How-To articles.

This edition has two articles about Integrating the HTML editor FCKEditor and Adding fuzzy logic search to your APEX application.

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Want to integrate a fancy Thumbnail Viewer in your application?

Then you have to check out the blog of Dimitri Gielis! A month ago he did a posting about how to integrate the Highslide JS thumbnail viewer (check out there homepage, they have a nice demonstration gallery) into an APEX application.

If you haven't attended Oracle Open World 2006 in SF (like me), you have to check out his diary about OOW. You feel as if you have been there! :-)

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Superbe German Apex community website

If you are able to read german, check out the excellent APEX community website hosted by Carsten Czarski of Oracle Germany. There are a bunch of How-To articles, which walk you through complicated stuff by providing a very detailed description what to do. Piece of cake, as the Americans would say! :-)

Every two weeks two new topics are covered. Last edition covers Exporting via commandline and About DBMS_SCHEDULER.

This site is a must read for german APEX developers!

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Interesting APEX blog by Benjamin Wootton

Just found the APEX blog by Benjamin Wooton. Has some really interesting articles like the best practices for collaborative development or that you have to take care of the debug option when deploying your application. And different other tips and tricks.

Check it out!

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